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89–499 PDF 2003

S. HRG. 108–131

LIFE INSIDE NORTH KOREA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EAST ASIAN

AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 5, 2003

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware

PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

BARBARA BOXER, California

BILL NELSON, Florida

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia

JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey

KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Staff Director

ANTONY J. BLINKEN, Democratic Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EAST ASIAN

AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas, Chairman

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey

(II)

CONTENTS

Page

Hassig, Dr. Kongdan Oh, research staff member, Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexander, VA ............................................................................................. 21

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 24

Ji, Mrs. Hae-Nam, North Korean defector; accompanied by T. Kim, interpreter ..................................................................................................................... 13

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 16

Liang-Fenton, Ms. Debra, executive director, U.S. Committee for Human

Rights in North Korea, Washington, DC ........................................................... 25

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 29

Linton, Dr. Stephen W., chairman, Eugene Bell Foundation, Clarksville, MD . 33

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 35

Nam, Dr. Jai, Citizens Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North

Korean Refugees ................................................................................................... 21

Natsios, Hon. Andrew S., Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development, Washington DC ...................................................................................... 3

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 6

Nolan, Dr. Marcus, senior fellow, Institute for International Economics,

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 39

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 40

United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, statement

submitted for the record ...................................................................................... 50

(III)

(1)

LIFE INSIDE NORTH KOREA

THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 2003

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:34 p.m., in room

SD–419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sam Brownback

(chairman of the subcommittee), presiding.

Present: Senator Brownback.

Senator BROWNBACK. This hearing of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs on ‘‘Life Inside North

Korea’’ will come to order.

I would like to begin by thanking the chairman of the full committee, Senator Lugar, and his staff for guidance and input on this

very complex issue.

Our first panel will feature Andrew Natsios who comes to us as

Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Welcome, Mr. Natsios. In that capacity, Mr. Natsios oversees the

considerable food aid made available by the United States to the

rest of the world, but Mr. Natsios is also the author of the book,

‘‘The Great North Korean Famine,’’ and is a most available source

of information on the challenges facing average North Koreans

fighting for survival. So he comes not only as an administration official, but also with considerable expertise on North Korea, and we

are delighted to have you here.

On the second panel, we have someone who can provide an important firsthand account of life inside North Korea. Ms. Hae Nam

Ji is a survivor of the North Korean prison system, and after some

time in China came to South Korea where she now resides. She has

faced unimaginable horrors, and we appreciate her courage in sharing her story with us today.

The third panel will feature a series of experts, and I am sure

we will receive a wide range of information about conditions inside

North Korea from that panel.

Let me begin by describing today’s hearings by explaining what

it is not. This is not about nuclear power plants, weapons of mass

destruction, drug-running, or proliferation, or threats from

Pyongyang, though each of these issues are of vital importance.

Today’s hearing focuses on something often overlooked, but just

as significant: life inside North Korea. Today’s hearing will provide

a glimpse as to what goes on inside the most closed society on

Earth.

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This hearing comes at a particularly important time. One year

ago, the world watched dozens of North Korean escapees overcome

considerable odds and gain freedom at various diplomatic missions

in China. Since that time, North Korea has admitted to possessing

nuclear weapons and has threatened both its neighbors and the

United States with war.

Today’s hearing helps to ensure that North Korea cannot use its

bellicose rhetoric to obscure its true nature from the world. As I

have said before, North Korea’s is today’s ‘‘killing field,’’ a place

where repression, deprivation, and depression rule the day.

There are, as best as anyone can tell, as many as 300,000, perhaps as few as 30,000, North Koreans living in hiding in northeast

China. At a hearing last year, Senator Kennedy and I explored this

issue in great detail. I believe that today we can both extend and

expand what was started that day. There is much to expound upon

regarding this topic; however, we want to do our due diligence by

exploring all angles of the situation inside North Korea.

First, some 200,000 North Koreans languish inside North Korean

prison camps, gulags. Satellite photos corroborate the testimony of

survivors. North Korea’s gulag recalls the horrors of the Soviet

Union under Stalin. Beatings, assaults, abuse, malnutrition, forced

labor, death are the threads that always seem to link the story of

one survivor to another.

Second, the strange and contradictory principles of so-called socialism and the near worship of the Kim dynasty place great constraints on North Korean society. This is a world of suspicion

where even a perceived slight against the government can mean a

prison sentence.

Finally, millions of North Koreans died of starvation during the

severe famines of the 1990s. Those deaths have as much to do with

incompetence and, one might easily conclude, indifference from the

government and government policies as they did with natural

floods and natural disaster. While the nation has recovered from

the depth of its famine, millions continue to go hungry and are fed

by international food donations. With a defunct national food distribution system, the North Korean people can only hope that

international food aid will arrive and feed them before it is diverted

to North Korea’s bulging Armed Forces.

North Korea policy experts often debate whether North Korea

will soon collapse. To date, Kim Jong-il has regrettably defied several predictions of his government’s demise. The Kim dynasty could

end tomorrow or it could survive the decade. But one thing is clear:

We cannot turn our back on millions of suffering North Koreans

while we wait for real change to move north of the DMZ.

There are those who would argue that we must first resolve our

outstanding security concerns with North Korea before we discuss

the North Korea regime’s internal behavior and how we should

treat North Korean refugees coming out. I believe this approach is

short-sighted. It is the regime in Pyongyang which spews nuclear

threats at the rest of the world. It is that very same regime which

spawns an exodus of its own citizens hoping to escape the depravity and death of their homeland.

Our North Korea policy must not only protect our interest in

East Asia but support the cause of freedom across the entire KoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:26 Oct 29, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 89499 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
3

rean Peninsula. In the end, a brighter, fuller, free, and open Korean Peninsula is our ultimate national interest.

Mr. Natsios, we are delighted to have you here at this hearing

today as the administration witness, as the Administrator of the

U.S. Agency for International Development, but also as an expert

on North Korea and what is taking place in North Korea to the

North Korean people. I look forward to your testimony and questions.

I might announce ahead of time that you have a prior commitment with the Appropriations Committee, and I always understand

those conflicts, now that I’ve gone on the Appropriations Committee, and that you’ll have to leave at about 5 minutes to 2. So

we will try to conclude by that time.

Welcome to the committee and the floor is yours.

STATEMENT OF HON. ANDREW S. NATSIOS, ADMINISTRATOR,

U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. NATSIOS. Thank you, Senator Brownback.

What I would like to do is submit my testimony for the

record——

Senator BROWNBACK. Without objection.

Mr. NATSIOS [continuing]. And make five or six points quickly,

and then leave some time for questions and answers. I think this

might be more productive in terms of getting more information out.

I became involved with North Korea as a result of my position

as a senior executive with World Vision and as a leader of the

Emergency Relief Committee of Interaction, which is a consortium

of American NGOs in the city. That began in the fall of 1996, but

accelerated in 1997 and 1998. I took a fellowship at USIP after I

left World Vision in June 1998 for 8 months to write this book.

When I was with World Vision in June 1997, I went to North

Korea for a week, but I really could not tell what was going on

based on the fact that it is a police state and it is very difficult to

tell what is going on from inside the country. I am convinced, if you

really want to find out what is going on, you need to talk to defectors and refugees and cross reference their testimony to make sure

you get an accurate picture.

So I went up to the North Korean border with a Buddhist monk

friend of mine, the Venerable Pomyong, who is a South Korean

Buddhist monk who heads Good Friends. It used to be called

KBSM, the Korean Buddhist Sharing Movement. He had a network

at the time—he no longer has it, it has been dispersed by the Chinese police—that helped refugees, and he had extensive networks

that allowed us to conduct interviews. I interviewed 25 North Korean refugees for about 3 hours each in December 1998. And my

conclusions are based on that research, as well as research I have

done since.

There are essentially five principles that describe the way in

which the North Korean Government treats its people and why

they behave the way they do internally.

The central operating principle that drives all of the decisions of

the central government is regime survival. The two best friends of

Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, his father who died in the mid-nineVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:26 Oct 29, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 89499 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
4

ties, were Honecker, the Communist dictator of East Germany, and

Ceausescu in Romania. You know what happened to the two of

them. Ceausescu and his wife were executed by the military in a

coup called the Revolution, and Honecker went on war crimes trials

after his regime fell when Soviet support was withdrawn. There is

a terror in the senior leadership of North Korea that the same

thing is going to happen to them. So Kim Jong-il has been quoted

as saying, to defectors whom I interviewed, we must maintain control at all costs or this is going to happen to us.

The second proposition is that it is very difficult to tell what is

going on in North Korea because they maintain a level of control

that is far beyond almost any totalitarian dictatorship of the 20th

century. In the Soviet Union, there was a whole underground

movement. There was an underground church movement. There

was Samizdat literature, which was Xeroxed and spread around.

There was a huge black market that existed after Stalin died that

in fact made the country marginally functional and allowed some

space for people to live. That does not exist in North Korea. At

least, it did not until the mid-nineties. There are fissures in the

state apparatus of terror that have appeared since the famine

which traumatized North Korean society far more than anybody realizes.

My expertise is really not in North Korea per se. I have learned

a lot as I was researching this. My expertise is in famine. This was

a great famine. It killed about 10 percent of the population, 2.5

million people. My friend, the Venerable Pomyong, thinks it is close

to 3.5 million. As time has gone on, I think my figure is conservative, to be very frank with you.

Ten percent of the population of the country died a slow and

painful death in such horrible ways, with mass graves all over the

country, piles of dead bodies in the railway stations, refugees

crowding along the border—I actually saw dead bodies on the riverbanks of the Tumen River. It is the Yalu and Tumen Rivers that

divide China and North Korea. I was told once by someone, an intelligence agency that will remain nameless, there was no evidence

of mass graves. I watched a mass burial. Twenty-five bodies were

dumped into a large pit. We had binoculars. We were looking right

on the border, across the river into one of the large cities on the

river. This was a large cemetery. It was on a mountainside overlooking the Tumen River. And we watched the burial take place.

There was a large pit and about a couple dozen men took these

bodies off a truck, dumped them into the grave, then it looked like

they were praying or something, and they started dumping the dirt

in. And South Korean and Japanese TV have photographed mass

graves along the river. So it is no secret.

No one in a Confucian society would bury people in a mass grave

unless they were displaced and no one knew who they were. That

is why they were buried there, we conclude, from the customs of

North Korean society. They died trying to escape. They probably

came up from the south somewhere, they died along the border,

and they were buried in these mass graves, which are all along the

border area.

The third proposition is that system that crumbled in the midnineties was essentially, we’ll give up all our freedom and private

5

life, in exchange for which you will take care of us from our cradle

to our grave. That was sort of the unspoken, unwritten compact

that existed in North Korean society. The problem is now you give

up all your freedom and you get nothing in return because the public services that did exist up until the mid-nineties have virtually

collapsed. The health care system has collapsed. Large portions of

the schools have collapsed as educational institutions, particularly

for the poorer classes of people in society. Concerning the public

distribution system, they have virtually announced that it does not

function effectively anymore in much of the country. It does exist

still in the capital city for people in defense industries that produce

something of value that they can export, and for the party cadres

and the military. The military has a separate rationing system in

the public distribution system [PDS]. The PDS may exist in name.

It has not existed as a food rationing system since the mid-nineties.

Pomyong did 1,600 interviews through his organization. These

were extensive interviews which were done in a very careful manner. The data shows a dramatic collapse. They went from 60 percent of the population that was supported by the PDS in the early

1990s to about 7 percent in the middle of the famine. So you can

see a dramatic drop in the PDS support levels.

The fourth proposition is that Kim Il-sung did have widespread

support. He was able to do this because they controlled all information. It was a totalitarian dictatorship, but the cult of personality

did work. It does not work anymore, and I think the famine has

a lot to do with this.

I had an interview with someone who said the only people that

survived in his village—it was in the northwestern part of the

country—survived as a result of going to China to live during the

famine, bringing food back, or at least regaining their health on the

markets. What they said was that without the coping mechanism

of moving into China, none of them in the village would have survived. Everybody who refused to leave died in the famine, in this

particular village.

The movement of people in China collapsed the lie that was

given to the North Korean people about life outside because the

North Korean people are told that, while they are suffering, the

world outside of North Korea is in the middle of a civil war and

a famine so horrible you cannot even imagine it.

I went through rural China. I was astonished at the prosperity.

In very remote areas at night, you would see in people’s windows

the television on in people’s homes. This is a very prosperous farming area. These North Koreans remember the stories from the Cultural Revolution where people were dying during the Great Leap

Forward from 1958 to 1962 in China where 30 million people died

of starvation, in the worst famine in recorded history. They remember the Cultural Revolution, the civil war that took place during

that period. It was virtually a civil war. And they thought it was

still going on until they went to China and saw that people are

well-fed. There is no hunger in that area of China that I could detect anywhere. It was extremely prosperous by Chinese standards.

And the North Koreans saw it and said, ‘‘They have been lying

to us all these years. They have been lying to us.’’ And they went

back into the country, and they told me what they said. ‘‘We told

6

everybody in the village this is all a lie. We have been told we are

better off. We are not better off. We have been told that China is

in the middle of a civil war and a famine. It is not true. They are

not.’’

‘‘And more importantly,’’ these refugees told me, ‘‘we found out

that South Korea is far richer than China. It is a Western industrialized society. It is very prosperous and we are dying while they

live as kings in South Korea because of the fact they have accepted

capitalism and democratic governance.’’

The final thing I want to say is that the famine has caused irreversible changes to the old order. While the regime did attempt in

1999, once the famine was over, to return to the old order, they

could not do it. It was impossible to reconstitute the system the

way it existed before. Why is that?

One, it is because of the economic collapse of the society. The

subsidies from China and Russia ended in the early 1990s, and

that was the steady collapse of the economy that the country is still

suffering from.

The second reason is the famine traumatized the society to such

an extraordinary degree that it will be in the historic memory of

the society for a very, very long time. It is not simply the hunger.

It is the fear of a return to that, and I would argue that once you

go through a famine, you can never go back psychologically.

Anyway, those are my comments. Now I have used most of my

time up. So a few minutes for questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Natsios follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ANDREW S. NATSIOS, ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. AGENCY

FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Chairman Brownback, Members of the committee: It is an honor to be here today

to discuss ‘‘Life Inside North Korea.’’ As you may know, during the North Korean

famine I have researched the living conditions of the average North Korean for

many years with a particular focus on their food security. I have traveled inside the

country, visited the border areas in China, and interviewed North Korean refugees

in a number of countries.

My testimony will be based on five propositions about the nature of the North Korean regime and the way in which it controls North Korean society.

• The central operating principle which drives all of the decision making of the

North Korean government is regime survival and protection of the system

which supports it at all costs because the leaders believe that reforming the system could lead to its collapse.

• No totalitarian regime of the last century has exercised a greater degree of absolute control over its society than the North Korean government, though cracks

began to appear in the state apparatus of terror beginning in 1996 because of

economic collapse and the famine crisis.

• The unwritten and unspoken compact prior to the famine was that the people

surrendered their freedom in exchange for which the state agreed to care for

them, heavily tempered by political loyalty, from cradle to grave. This compact

began to crumble by 1996 as virtually all public services including the food distribution system collapsed except those serving the party cadre, the security apparatus, and the capital city.

• While the regime under Kim Il Sung had widespread public support prior to the

crisis of the 1990s, the famine, the collapse of services, and the rise in the

human misery index have meant a substantial decline in public support even

among the party cadres for Kim Jong Il and his government, which now more

than ever relies on the state security apparatus and military to maintain control.

7

• The economic crisis of the 1990s, which led to a famine that killed more than

21⁄2 million people, or 10% of the population of the country, has caused irreversible changes to the old order and the system which supports its.

It is a fact that no government in the world is more reclusive, more suspicious

of contact with the outside world, more isolated, and more devoted to absolute control and secrecy than North Korea. This fact makes it difficult, but not impossible,

to develop an accurate understanding of conditions in the country. We now have

more information on life in North Korea than at any time in the recent past. Extensive reporting is available, from a wide variety of reputable sources, which paints

a consistent and all too clear picture of the Orwellian society that exists in North

Korea today. Human Rights Watch, Jasper Becker’s research and reporting on the

famine, Good Friends (a South Korean Buddhist nongovernmental organization),

Amnesty International, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Doctors Without

Borders, and Action Contre la Faim, among others, have reported extensively on

their direct experiences in the country and on the results of interviews with North

Korean refugees and defectors. Additional evidence exists in professional journals

and an increasing number of private books which describes in great detail the lives

of specific individuals who have lived in North Korea.

There are apologists for the North Korean government who contend that the regime in North Korea is not as repressive, controlling, and brutal as I am about to

describe. They are wrong. North Korean refugees have often described their country

as one massive prison.

EVERY ASPECT OF LIFE CONTROLLED

Mr. Chairman, life in North Korea today is less free and less humane than life

in any other country now or in modern time. Every aspect of life is controlled and

every bit of individualism destroyed. This is not simply the result of a totalitarian

regime. There have been many totalitarian regimes that have aggressively, even

brutally, controlled their citizenry. Upon review, however, most other recent totalitarian regimes have allowed some measure of private freedom in the lives of the

people if they avoided dissent and did not threaten the political system. In the case

of North Korea, we have no evidence of underground dissent, as there was in the

Samidazat literature in the Soviet Union, for example. Buddhism and Christianity

have been virtually destroyed as religious institutions in the country.

On March 31, 2003, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,

and Labor released its country report on human rights practices for North Korea.

That report provides an accurate and balanced description of life inside North Korea

today, and I strongly support its findings.

In order to convey the true horror that is life in North Korea, I would like to discuss a number of aspects of the North Korean regime that help explain the extent

to which all aspects of life are controlled and regulated.

THE POTEMKIN VILLAGE SYNDROME

When discussing the regime’s control over the population of North Korea, many

people cite the surveillance and monitoring capability of the large military and security service apparatus. While it is true that these organizations have their eyes and

ears imbedded throughout the country, it is not these physical controls that give the

regime its power over the population. The regime in North Korea derives the vast

majority of its influence over the minds and hearts of the people through its absolute control and manipulation of all information made available to the local population. By controlling what a person hears, reads, and sees, one controls what he

or she thinks and believes.

In North Korea, all aspects of the media are controlled completely by the regime.

Newspaper, radio, and television reporting are all centrally managed and convey

only the messages that the regime condones. Radios and televisions in the country

are built to receive only State approved stations, and any attempt to modify a set

to receive foreign broadcasts is a criminal offense. A system of travel permits modeled after Stalinist Russia restricts the movement of people outside their villages.

Even travel between counties and provinces by individuals is severely restricted to

prevent the transfer of information between different groups in the country. As an

example of how restricted the travel of North Koreans within their own country can

be, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) staff have reported that, on

many of their monitoring visits throughout the country, their handlers reveal that

the trip is their first visit outside the county where they lived.

Today in North Korea, maintaining control of information remains of paramount

concern to the regime. In fact, given the informational contamination that has been

precipitated by the humanitarian crises over the last eight years, regaining control

8

of the population’s access to information has taken on new importance. Since the

mid 1990s, the flow of international food assistance has been accompanied by international staff who insist on following the food for monitoring purposes. In addition,

beginning in 1997, the United States insisted on labeling each bag of U.S. food donated to North Korea with the phrase in Korean ‘‘gift of the people of the United

States.’’ By some estimates, there are over 30 million Korean-marked bags circulating around North Korea. Each visit by a foreign humanitarian monitor and each

food aid bag distributed around the country represent informational contamination

that requires an explanation by the regime. In the case of the food bags, refugees

have reported that the U.S. food aid is explained as reparations for damages caused

during the war.

It has also been suggested that the aversion of the North Korean regime to providing greater access and more random monitoring for humanitarian workers has

little to do with military security—which is the regime’s excuse of record. Instead,

broader access around the country and the more random monitoring of humanitarian deliveries are believed to concern the regime because it would lack the means

to control the flow of information that the expansion of these systems would induce.

FOOD ALLOCATION AS A SYSTEM OF CONTROL

In North Korea, a ‘‘public distribution system,’’ or PDS, was used to provide both

food and many material needs to the majority of the population. In addition, the

PDS was used to promote loyalty to the regime and prevent or limit the travel of

the population. In their book, North Korea after Kim Il Sung, Henriksen and Mo

state that, ‘‘Food ration levels were traditionally determined by a combination of social rank, the importance of one’s profession to the state, and political status.’’ The

ration system promotes loyalty to the regime, as any misconduct, real or perceived,

could result in demotion to a lower rank of the scale and thus less food for the individual. The ration system severely regulates the desire of the beneficiaries to move

around the country as the beneficiaries must be present at their local PDS station

to receive rations.

The collapse of the PDS, except for the party elite, capital city, security apparatus,

and the defense industries, has meant that this means of controlling behavior has

declined in importance. The collapse of the PDS, which the central authorities were

unable to reverse, was finally acknowledged when the authorities announced in

2001 that people were responsible for feeding themselves (except for the groups

mentioned above).

Since 1995, when the international community began providing food assistance to

North Korea, the needs of the most vulnerable groups—presumably those among the

lower ranks of the food system—have been the focus of international aid. Unfortunately, there are increasing reports that the most vulnerable are not receiving the

international assistance despite the best efforts of the international community.

On March 9, 2000, the nongovernmental organization, Action Contre la Faim

(ACF), issued a report explaining its decision to withdraw from North Korea. ACF

had been working in North Korea since January of 1998, attempting to provide humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable in the country. One major justification

that the organization cited for closing its program was the regime’s denial of access

to the most vulnerable people. The ACF report stated:

By confining humanitarian organizations to the support of these state

structures that we know are not representative of the real situation of malnutrition in the country the authorities are deliberately depriving hundreds

of thousands of truly needy Koreans of assistance. As a consequence any

humanitarian assistance provided is only helping the populations which the

regime has chosen to favour and support, and which are certainly not the

most deprived.

Today, the United States is leading the international community in its efforts to

address some of the programmatic deficiencies that undermine the credibility and

effectiveness of the international food aid activities in North Korea. The UNICEF

and WFP-sponsored nutrition survey in North Korea that was completed in November of 2002 clearly shows that there are no longer famine conditions in the country.

The survey also shows that, while the nutritional situation has improved in the

country in the aggregate, the improvements are uneven and focused predominantly

in the areas in and around Pyongyang and Nampo. Both the Pyongyang and Nampo

districts have malnutrition rates about half as high as some of the northern provinces. As a result, current and future food aid activities will require greater access

and monitoring capabilities to ensure proper targeting and delivery of food assistance to those most in need.

9

HEALTHCARE

The healthcare system in North Korea has been in a steep decline since the beginning of the 1990s. Without the economic support from the Soviet Union, the ability

of the regime to purchase medicines and maintain the medical infrastructure immediately began to fail. Today, notwithstanding a relatively well trained staff, the

healthcare system in the country has all but collapsed. Only the elites at the highest

level have access to modern medical care. Today, the only access that the average

North Korean has to modern medicine is either through the black market or, if extremely lucky, through international assistance programs. Generally, herbal or traditional medicines are used by the average North Korean, unless they have the financial capability to purchase the needed medicines from the black market.

Following visits to hospitals in North Korea, international aid workers have reported that even the larger regional hospitals have no regular electricity, little or

no medicines, and no functioning modern medical equipment. Smaller hospitals are

even less equipped. Only those medical facilities that receive direct assistance from

international aid agencies can be expected to have any resources to address the

medical needs of the local population.

As a result of the almost total lack of modern healthcare and poor water and sanitation systems in North Korea, the country is a breeding ground for communicable

diseases. Currently, tuberculosis, malaria, and hepatitis B are considered to be endemic to the country, and other diseases if introduced into the country could have

a devastating effect on the population. In particular, the possibility is great that

SARS will enter the country through the porous border with China. The regime is

making strenuous efforts to restrict the movement of people into the capitol city via

air, including a 10-day quarantine for every traveler to Pyongyang. However, similar measures are not being undertaken at land crossings. If the disease takes hold,

the impact would be tremendous.

CONCENTRATION RE-EDUCATION CAMPS

The regime in North Korea operates approximately ten concentration or ‘‘re-education’’ camps for political prisoners. The Far Eastern Economic Review has published satellite photographs of one camp that is estimated to hold as many as 50,000

people. The ten camps are estimated to hold between 200,000 to 250,000 prisoners

in total. The regime uses the camps to punish anyone who fails to adhere strictly

and completely to every ‘‘law,’’ but arrest and confinement can come at any time

with no explanation. In some reports, people have been arrested and detained for

years for failing to show appropriate respect to the ‘‘Great Leader’’ or the ‘‘Dear

Leader.’’ In other cases, entire families have been arrested because flaws have been

found in their family history.

The camps differ in that each serves a specific type of prisoner generally ranging

from those considered ‘‘redeemable’’ to those who are ‘‘expendable.’’ Those who are

redeemable are often released after a number of years of hard labor and re-education. Expendable prisoners are never expected to leave the camp and usually die

of malnutrition, exhaustion, and abuse. Two recent books provide graphic explanations of deplorable conditions in the more ‘‘lenient’’ re-education camps: Aquariums of Pyongvang by Kang chol-Hwan and Eyes of Tailless Animals by Soon Ok

Lee. Torture is widespread along with gradual starvation from the minimal food rations.

ATTEMPTS AT ECONOMIC REFORMS

In June of 2002, the regime in North Korea introduced a number of economic reforms. These reforms, which included raising the prices of staple food commodities,

increasing wage rates, and devaluing the Won, were apparently intended to stimulate the agricultural sector and promote increased industrial productivity.

Unfortunately, the reforms instituted by the regime in North Korea have not improved the economic situation in the country. As Bradley 0. Babson stated in his

report, Economic Cooperation on the Korean Peninsula, ‘‘the reforms are not sufficient to assure a turnaround in DPRK’s economic crisis and even add new risks,

particularly the risk of inflation.’’ While the risk of inflation as a result of the reforms is significant, the humanitarian community is more concerned about the large

segments of the population who have seen their ability to support themselves decline or disappear. As the World Food Program points out in its 2002 report on its

operations in North Korea, ‘‘Surplus labour created by a reform-induced drive for

industries to become more efficient is supposed to be redeployed by the state and

continue receiving a salary. However, . . . there may be insufficient capacity to absorb a potentially significant labor force.’’ Recent reports indicate that unemployVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:26 Oct 29, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 89499 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
10

ment and underemployment particularly in the northeastern parts of the country

are a significant and growing problem. Obviously the unemployed do not receive a

salary and therefore are incapable of taking advantage of any ‘‘improvements’’ in

food availability. In addition, the agricultural system remains mired in the collective

farms, and thus higher food prices have not resulted in increased food production.

Mr. Chairman, it is astonishing to me that the international humanitarian and

human rights community, which has been so outspoken in its condemnation of

human right violations in countries like Burma and Sudan, has been so late in acknowledging the reality of life in North Korea and the nature of the regime. The

President has reversed this relative international silence on what the North Korean

regime is really about in his many comments on North Korea and through the aggressive reporting of the State Department (Democracy, Human Rights and Labor

Bureau reports).

We will continue our efforts at every opportunity to publicize the true nature of

the North Korean government and, through our humanitarian programs, to effectively and transparently address the most urgent needs of the people. Since 1995,

our humanitarian programs have provided almost two million tons of food aid to

North Korea, valued at approximately $650 million.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. I would be pleased to answer any

questions the committee may have.

Senator BROWNBACK. Do you believe that the Kim Jong-il regime

is near to collapse at this point in time, given the factors that you

have articulated?

Mr. NATSIOS. I do not. I think the regime has been substantially

shaken to its very roots, but there is no evidence that they are on

the edge of collapse right now from what I can see. I believe if they

go into another famine, the country will be destabilized.

We have evidence of three attempted coups or planned coups

that were discovered by the regime. I discovered one, which I report in my book. I have discovered two since then. These were

small things, but it is pretty clear that they took place or were attempted. All the people involved were taken out and shot. I had a

defector actually tell me a friend of his watched the 24 officers

being taken out of a building and executed right on the spot for

having gotten involved in the coups. It was in Hamhung City and

it was at the height of the famine that this first coups took place,

though there was unrest in the people’s army as a result of the

coups. The people’s army is so large it meant that a large number

of families had soldiers in them whose family members had died

in the famine.

The same thing happened in China in 1962. The reason the

Great Leap Forward famine ended, and Mao reversed himself, is

because there was a secret party document that said there is going

to be a coups or a mutiny in the people’s army of China unless you

stop this famine, because it is causing unrest. When people go back

to their villages and see everybody dying, they go into a rage. It

is affecting morale and there is going to be a revolt. And Mao reversed himself. The same thing, I am convinced, took place in

North Korea.

The difference is Mao did not know until later that the famine

was taking place. People lied to him. Kim Jong-il knew the famine

was taking place from the beginning. He was given regular reports.

He wanted to know how many people died. He tracked the whole

thing. In fact, they kept a food distribution that basically appears

to have fed the people who were in the elite class that ran the

country or people whose loyalty was not questioned. The people

11

who came from a questionable background or were disloyal or

former prisoners who survived the gulag, they died.

Senator BROWNBACK. I understand that there is a huge gulag

system and that at the same time, the regime imports, while its

people are starving, luxury tobaccos, wines, luxury cars. Is that

true? Is that taking place, that the elite in the regime are living

very high?

Mr. NATSIOS. Well, I took a Mercedes Benz when I was with

World Vision from the airport to the hotel where we were staying.

It was a new model and it was very nice. There is a report that

a large shipment of Mercedes Benz did go to North Korea during

the famine. One shipment was sent back because they would not

deliver the check before it arrived. A lot of Western businesses had

had trouble. They would deliver the stuff and never get paid. So

many of them realize now if you want to get paid, you have to get

the check before the stuff arrives. But another shipment did arrive.

Apparently they paid the money from some source, and it arrived.

There is clearly the case that the elites at the top levels of the

cadre live a very prosperous life. There is evidence from the famine

in the northeastern region, which is where it was most severe, that

even cadre members died. We estimate that about 50,000 Communist Party cadre members died, but they were at the lower levels. These are not the upper elites.

It is a highly class-conscious society and there were 62 categories

of people in a hierarchical order, almost in the Confucian sense of

one order being subordinate to the other. In the upper reaches of

that order, people live very, very well.

Senator BROWNBACK. Mr. Natsios, I would ask if the administration could consider releasing information that it has, to the degree

it can, on the gulags, on the lifestyle of the people higher up, and

on the system and the famine. I think this would be very illuminating to people to see and to hear and to understand. This is

the sort of information that I am receiving from interviews of refugees. We will have people here today to talk that are refugees or

people that have been able to find their way out and to show here

is what is happening to the North Korean people. To the degree

that the administration could release some of that information that

you have that has not been released, I think it would be very helpful in showcasing to the world how horrific the people in North

Korea live.

Mr. NATSIOS. Two final comments before I excuse myself. The

first is that here is a book written by someone who was in a gulag

for 10 years. It is called ‘‘Aquariums of Pyongyang,’’ and it is a

powerful book, very riveting book. It was written by a French

human rights specialist but dictated by this young man who spent

10 years with his family in the gulag. It describes how he survived.

I want to just add one last thing. I keep reading in the news

media that the country is on the edge of famine. There is mass

starvation. The famine ended, in terms of high levels of mortality,

in the spring of 1998 and it has not returned. They have liberalized

prices in an attempt to go to a market economy. They did not liberalize the rest of the system. So they have very high food prices in

the farmers’ markets where most of the people eat now, and people’s salaries have not gone up, which they promised they would

12

do, to meet that need. And more importantly, while food prices

have gone up, they have not privatized the agricultural system. So

there is no incentive to produce more food because it is still a staterun collective farming system.

But there is no famine. Is there misery? Yes, absolutely. Is there

hunger among the lower classes in North Korean society? Hunger

remains a terrible reality. But we are not seeing any evidence of

mass starvation in North Korea. The apocalyptic statements by

some organizations about that are grossly misinformed and, I

think, are not serving the international humanitarian system properly because we do not always have enough humanitarian relief to

go around. Sending food where you really do not need it does not

make sense.

There are parts of North Korea, in the northeast particularly,

which remain food-insecure in even a good year, and there are

areas among the lower classes where there is hunger and a need

for a modest response. But we do not need to have a famine response in a country that is not in the middle of a famine.

Senator BROWNBACK. There was a recent committee hearing

about drug-running being done by the North Korean Government,

state-run poppy farms. Is that accurate?

Mr. NATSIOS. We could not figure out why farmers I interviewed

said they had a third of their land in their villages not farmed.

There is a certain Korean word they used, and Pomyong and I

could not figure out why land would be unfarmed. I found that out

recently. The term in North Korea means the land is put aside for

poppy production. They shrewdly substituted a word meaning fallow land for poppy production. So it is actually state-managed,

state-run, and there is an allocation made in the state farms for

actually producing poppy. It is not illegal. It is encouraged.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you very much, Mr. Administrator.

The next witness will be Ms. Hae Nam Ji. She is a North Korean

escapee that I am pleased will be testifying.

As she comes forward with her interpreter, I would like to introduce to the people here a group of South Koreans who are here who

have family members who were abducted by North Korea sometime

during or after the Korean conflict, and these are people that represent organizations and they themselves have had family members abducted by North Korea and who have not been returned. If

I could, I would like to have those people stand who are here representing those abducted from South Korea. Could you please

stand?

We are pleased that you would be willing to come in. Earlier

today I was able to meet in my office with this group of individuals

who have had family members abducted by North Korea and not

returned.

They were noting to me—and I thought this was very important—that the abduction of the Japanese by the North Koreans

had received a great deal of international notoriety, but the abduction of South Koreans by North Korea has not. There were some

80,000 abducted during the Korean War and since then there are

documented about 485, I believe, 486 that have been abducted from

South Korea by the North Koreans and not returned. Now, several

13

have been found and have surreptitiously been taken back out of

North Korea.

But this group is to be recognized and commended for their staying with this and drawing attention to this issue of their family

members being taken, many for 20 to 30 years and not heard from

since and then put in supposedly horrific conditions in North

Korea, but they have not heard from them. So I appreciate very

much your attendance here at our hearing today.

The next witness, as I stated, would be Mrs. Hae Nam Ji. She

is an escapee from a North Korean prison camp. She will have an

interpreter give her statement. I am delighted to welcome you here

to the committee, and the floor is yours to testify.

STATEMENT OF MRS. HAE-NAM JI, NORTH KOREAN ESCAPEE;

ACCOMPANIED BY T. KIM, INTERPRETER

Mrs. JI. Mr. Chairman, I would like to first thank you for giving

me this opportunity to talk and give testimony to the real state of

affairs in North Korea.

Due to the restriction in time that I have to testify before you,

I would like to submit my prepared statement in its entirety, and

I would want that you accept that statement.

Senator BROWNBACK. It will be accepted and put into the record.

Mrs. JI. I was born on May 17, 1949 in Namun-ri, Hamhung

City. During my grown-up, adult life, I worked as a North Korean

propagandist specialist.

While I was working as a propagandist specialist for the North

Korean Government, I was charged of violating their law which I

didn’t think reasonable at all, that was, I sang a foreign song

which I was not allowed to do. For that crime, I was prosecuted

without trial and I was made subject to sexual harassment and torture, and those pains and trials, ordeals that I am going through

are beyond human description.

Senator BROWNBACK. Could I ask you? It was for singing a song,

did you say?

Mr. KIM. Yes, sir, singing a song by the title of ‘‘Don’t Cry

Hongdo.’’ That is a South Korean song, and that was forbidden in

North Korea to sing.

Senator BROWNBACK. Don’t Cry Hodho?

Mr. KIM. Hongdo. Hongdo is the name of a woman.

Mrs. JI. And I was sentenced 3 years to prison because of that

crime.

Of course, the charge was obviously that I did not sing the songs

in praise of the North Korean leader Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim

Jong-il, and I was charged of spoiling the mentality of the North

Korean populace by polluting them with South Korean songs, and

I was also charged with attempting to disseminate ideas of revisionism to their orthodox of their national policy.

So I was jailed and imprisoned soon after I was charged with violating North Korean law, and the charge again was simply I sang

the song that was forbidden in North Korea. Once I was put in

prison, I was allowed to have only a few grains of corn and with

salt soup and was put to forced labor and there was not enough

energy there, for we have to move whatever machine with human

effort. That is, we have to keep motors run under pressure, and all

14

the mistreatment that I suffered from that prison is beyond, again,

description by any human being or human imagination. And if we

did not meet the deadline or the quota of work that they have imposed on us, we were given a very minimum amount of food, even

the food amount for a daily meal is only 80 grams a day, but nevertheless, if we did not do our job right, that amount would even be

further reduced.

Again in the prison camp, life is beyond human description. Instead of going through and failing to go through such an ordeal of

unimaginable degree of torture and pain, many inmates would attempt to commit suicide by taking nails or taking a lot of salt into

their body, then getting sick. And I would see almost two or three

inmates were dying on a daily basis while I was there.

What I thought was intolerable for any human being was once

we were in the prison and there were prison guards of relatively

younger ages, they would violate the women inmates, harass sexually, and they will make such a situation in which inmates fight

each other. Again, this is beyond imagination of any person who

lives elsewhere outside North Korea.

Intolerant of the atrocities that the North Korean regime was

practicing upon its own people and fed up with the disguised policy

of the North Korean Government which I thought corrupt and illegal—and let me put it this way. It was like they were just covering

what is black with white cloth. I just did not think I could tolerate

it anymore. So I decided to escape from North Korea in 1998 to

China with the intention to finally reach the free land of South

Korea.

For those North Korean escapees who made a successful escape

to the land of China, mostly women, they are sold to China’s men

and they will just have whatever abuse and advantage of possessing North Korean women. Many North Korean women get impregnated, and then if they get caught, then they will be sent back

to North Korea for either being subject to being shot to death or

put into jail or prison again, and they will let die from hunger and

starvation. Nevertheless, the North Korean Government does not

feel any responsibility or sense of guilt about these situations.

And in some cases women are sold not just one time to one Chinese man, but over and over again for money, none of which goes

into the hands of these poor women.

The escapees are constantly pursued and hunted by the police,

and to run away from these police chase, escapees would hide in

rest rooms or a warehouse or sometimes brick factories’ oven or

hide in deep mountains. And nevertheless, it was very difficult for

these people to hide themselves away from these security personnel

who are constantly after them to catch them and trying to turn

over back to North Korean authorities. This is the kind of treatment we received, and I would say that is only subhuman in any

standard.

So even in China, we were mistreated like I have just described

to you, and it is not just in my case, but many other North Korean

women who successfully somehow made escaping to China had to

go through the same mistreatment and the same misfortune that

I told you about. I do not think that could be allowed to happen

on this Earth.

15

So people in North Korea believe the only way they can live

would be escaping to South Korea somehow, and I attempted the

same thing to reach South Korea, but I was caught in the course

of escaping to South Korea. I was sent back to North Korea, put

into prison again, and made subject to severe, indescribable torture

and pain. And they tramped on my legs telling me that I can never

run away from North Korea again, and I still feel pains from that

incident.

But I was lucky enough to be able to escape from the prison

again and I was determined to escape North Korea again. In the

course of my escape, I wanted to stop by in Hamhung where I

wanted to see my son and my brother. When I got there, I found

my brothers and my son all starved to death. They all died. They

weren’t there anymore. For this crime, I can never forgive the

North Korean regime.

And my determination was made even stronger as far as my intention to get to South Korea. But I did not have any money to arrange means of transportation or route to get to South Korea. So

what I had to do was we had to steal a Chinese boat, and I used

that boat. And while voyaging to South Korea, I was caught by

Chinese guards this time again.

I might say for those who are ready to die, maybe death does not

come to them. So I finally made my way to South Korea on January 14, 2002. Since then with the care of the South Korean Government, I have been able to lead a rather comfortable and peaceful

life.

I simply, Mr. Chairman, could not be content with comfort of life,

easy life in South Korea, because I had to think of all the North

Korean people that I left behind and what unbearable ordeal they

are going through. And I determined and decided to participate in

human rights movement in an effort to bring some hope to people

in North Korea. And I would like to see the entire world and all

government agencies, including your honorable committee, tell the

world what kind of crimes the North Korea Government is committing, and I would like to see democracy be brought to North Korea,

as well as abuse of human rights and infringements upon human

rights be ended in North Korea. It is my will to fight for this cause

as long as I live.

I do not think it is my personal pain that I have experienced but

this pain is shared with all people who live in North Korea today

and especially women who would like to leave that country and

come out like I did for a better life.

And to conclude my oral testimony, I would like to emphasize

that Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, does not care about his

people, whether they are dying from hunger or from diseases. I did

not see any North Korean Government official feel guilty of this

tragic situation.

In order to survive, to live on, the North Korean people are trying hard to leave their country with tears in their eyes, not knowing exactly where they can go for safety, roaming around in China,

for example. Nevertheless, there is no one who will take responsibility for those or who would help these people.

As my wish and request, I hope this committee can recognize

North Korean escapees as legitimate refugees by the international

16

standard, and this committee, along with the government and whoever, they can render help. I wish there would be establishment of

a refugee camp for their safety and protection of their future. The

venue for this refugee camp can be a third country, either China

or Mongolia. The purpose for this is so that we can protect the safety of these refugees. I would like to ask you, Mr. Chairman, and

other members of this committee to work together to bring about

this possible.

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Ji follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MRS. HAE-NAM JI, NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR

I was born in Namun-ri, Hamhung city, Hamkyungnam-do on May 17, 1949. My

family was poor but I graduated from a college of light industry. As a propaganda

member, I went around explaining and promoting party policy to everyone in several factories. I shouted out slogans such as ‘‘What the Party Decides, We Follow’’ encouraging all workers with my songs to complete their tasks within the set timeframe. In 1989 when the 13th Party Convention was held I began having skepticisms about the inappropriate actions of party cadres. At that time anyone who

raised an issue against the wrongdoings of the deified cadres was punished. Against

this backdrop, I divorced my husband who failed to take care of my family in 1989.

I sank into depression managing to stay afloat by selling my own blood because

I was unable to find a job. Then on the night of December 25, 1992, my friends gathered together in Hamju-kun, Hamkyungnam-do. That night I tried to drown my sorrows away by singing. Five people including a fortuneteller who read palms, and

three friends came together to sing and dance. I enjoyed time with my friends by

having fun and singing a South Korean song called ‘‘Don’t Cry Hongdo.’’ I learned

the song from a film based on President Park Jung Hee’s time called ‘‘Nation and

Destiny’’ where a singer belts out ‘‘Don’t Cry Hongdo’’ in a cafe in the fifth series.

A few months later on May 15, 1993 an inspector from the Security Protection

Agency of Hamju-kun Hamkyungnam-do summoned me. I followed him without a

second thought to the grounds of the Security Protection Agency. However to my

dismay I was locked in jail with no further words or going through preliminary

hearing (place where interrogation takes place before being incarcerated).

The beatings I received in jail were so severe that my entire body was bruised

and I was unable to get up for a month. I was sent to an enlightenment center after

receiving a sentence of three years. I was confined in the Security Protection Agency

of Hamju-kun for being the leader of disseminating revisionism in the society instead of singing songs of loyalty to Kim Il Song and Kim Jong Il. At that time according to the decree regarding social order, those who criticized the social order,

those who sang foreign songs, those who wasted state assets, those who ate but did

not work, those who drink, those who swindle were harshly punished and were even

subject to a death sentence.

The four people who were together with me that night received a sentence of eight

months of forced labor while I was sent to the Security Protection Agency in

Myungchun-kun, Hamkyungbuk-do after 15 days in the Security Protection Agency

in Hamju-kun, Hamkyungnam-do for teaching ‘‘Don’t Cry Hongdo’’ to the four others. I was subject to torture and sexual harassment that cannot be imagined by another human being. The detention center guards were around 22-24 years old. I was

mortified and wanted to die rather than be locked up. I tried swallowing cement

cut into four pieces of squares as well as sewage, rubbish and hair but I didn’t die.

From then on the guard increased surveillance and I wasn’t able to do anything

without them watching. That is when I was once again moved to the Security Protection Agency in Hwasung-kun. Even though the Administration of the Preliminary

Hearing made a call to say I wasn’t subject to a preliminary hearing, judicial officers managed to send the confined people to penal servitude by adding some other

defects. As I was accused of a misdemeanor of simply singing a wrong song, my preliminary hearing was relatively lighter than others. Imagine what the others with

more serious sentences endured?

The daily ration in the enlightenment center was 700g however we only received

180 grams a meal since the rest of the ration was set apart as ‘‘economy rice.’’ For

the new comers who were sent to new ‘‘inmate class’’ the ration was 100 grams per

meal. I became so emaciated that I felt that the pickled cabbage they provided together with the ration was the most delicious food.

The convicts were put into labor from 8 in the morning till 6 in the evening officially. However we normally had to work 22 hours for any urgent tasks the state

17

mandates. In addition the male guards would summon female inmates to their offices under the pretense of individual interrogation and sexually harass them without hesitation. After work each day, for an hour, a mutual criticism session was

held. The inmates would give false accusations against others or else a portion of

their ration was taken away.

I was released in September 1995 from the enlightenment center out of the supposed special consideration of the Dear Leader. I was sent to Hamju-kun but doors

to jobs were closed for me as a released convict. I felt hurt because people would

turn their backs on me and at that time, my husband and beloved son came to make

amends and I accepted my husband back out of forgiveness. With the stigma of

being a released convict during the time of an economic crisis, I had to resort to

selling my blood to transfusion centers to feed my husband and son. I walked 200-

250 ri(393m) a day as a peddler but my husband ran away with my son taking the

money I saved up with him.

I then decided to defect to China with South Korea in mind as the final destination. Disgruntled with the corrupt regime, cut off from the society and my family,

I turned away from my son and cursed North Korea as I fled in early September

of 1999. I had 1000 won in North Korean currency when I took the train headed

for Tuman River and arrived at Musan in Hamkyungbuk-do where they check

passes since it is close to the border. I hid inside restaurants and bribed the innkeeper to take shelter and sleep during the night. I brought 200 won worth of food

on top of 200 won in cash to a guard from National Border Patrol in Musan telling

him that I will give him more when I come back from China after selling my merchandise. He believed me and let me pass and I arrived in China after crossing the

Tuman River at 3:30 p.m. Even the soldiers are starving in North Korea that they

would do anything for money and their goal is to accrue 500,000 won by the time

they are dismissed from the military service.

They would not shy away from doing anything to get their hands on money regardless of military regulations. I was able to use this opportunity to escape to

China by crossing the Tuman River and hid in the mountains until night fell. I went

down to the village and asked an ethnic Korean family to let me sleep one night

but was refused. Anxious, I stayed awake all night in a shed eating pre-ripe fruits.

The next day I was caught by the owner of the grove who held me as a captive for

eating too many fruits. A car drove into the pear grove when we were working at

three in the afternoon and I quickly lowered myself into the pepper field to hide

in vain but was captured and pushed into the car. I was frightened because I

thought they were North Korean soldiers but I was brought to a place called Long

Jiang in Ji Lin. Along with another woman, I was locked up in a widower’s house.

The other woman was sold the next day and I became the sexual toy of the lone

old man. I couldn’t resist because I was afraid I would be sent to the Security Service. For 15 days I became the sex toy of a widower, looking out for any opportunity

to escape while getting some food into my stomach. Then one day an ethnic Korean

offered to take me to my sister’s house in Heilongjiang. I followed what ever he told

me because I was afraid only death would await me if I was captured by the Security Service. However I realized later that the widower gave me to the other ethnic

Korean because he had no money.

Eventually, I was sold for 4000 yuan to a Chinese in Hwangnihu Tonghua Ji Lin

and had to live in his house against my will because Ji Lin was a city with tight

security. The Chinese man’s height was only 145 cm and he had a very strange appearance. During my stay at his house, I had to hide inside the closet for hours

whenever policemen came to investigate. Afraid that I would escape, he installed

locks on every door and I was kept inside all day. I even had to relieve myself inside

the room. At night I was reduced to becoming a sex toy of someone who looked like

a monster and only the thought of escaping ruled my every moment in the house.

The man became suspicious that I was thinking of escape and he brought me to

the brick factory where he worked to watch over me day and night. Whenever the

Security Service rushed in I would flee to the mens toilet and stay there for hours

and even had to hide myself in the brick oven until I felt as if my whole body would

burn. Even on the coldest winter days I had to hide for hours in the rubbish storage

place. Several times, I hid in the closet in the factory changing room. Chinese men

would come to where I hid because they thought North Korean women were pretty.

They would stare at me as if I was an animal in the zoo and sexually molest me

and their actions were revolting. I didn’t have any chance to escape for several

months.

Then with the help of an ethnic Korean I lead the Chinese man to my sister’s

house near Heilongjiang. I used this chance to follow my sister’s friend to Weihai

Shandong where I found work in a restaurant. I was humiliated and insulted during

the three months at this restaurant because I was a woman from North Korea. I

18

was not paid on time and I had to do the most arduous and dirty tasks but I never

complained because I feared that even a small slight might cause them to send me

to the Security Service. I was determined to go to South Korea so I only worked

and tried not to think. With the small amount I managed to save, along with six

other North Koreans, I bought oil, life-jackets, binoculars and a compass with 700

yuan.

We made out to a beach in Weihai and succeeded in stealing a speedboat at

around midnight. As we headed for South Korea the gauge broke down and water

filled in the boat and a Chinese fisherman rescued us at daybreak after spending

the night fighting against high waves. We had 50 yuan tied around our thighs and

a saw in case if we were caught to use the saw in order to break free or commit

suicide.

The six of us stayed together trying to seize another opportunity when a South

Korean gave us 3000 yuan. We bought life jackets, binoculars, compass and some

bread. After stealing a motorboat we waited for a good day to start off when the

weather would be mild in a place called Hopo in Weihai. We left at 12 midnight

but the boat broke down several times and three days had passed but we had not

reached the international waters yet. It became stormy and a typhoon came upon

us. A woman called Chunsil became sea sick and kept dropping in and out of consciousness. We thought we were destined to die in the sea until we spotted two

ships towards South Korea with our binoculars. After making a quick calculation

we thought we were near South Korean waters and waved a white sheet believing

the two ships to be South Korean but they were Chinese boats. We tried to flee from

getting captured but were too tired.

We were confined for fifteen days by the Chinese border guards and our money

1000 yuan was taken away from us. A North Korean man was shackled for trying

to escape from the guards and the females were also shackled even when we went

to the bathroom. I demanded that the shackles should be taken off because we were

not yet proven to be criminals so I yelled in a high voice that I will jump out from

the third floor window if the shackles were not removed. However instead of taking

the shackles off, a male security guard kept watch over me all through the night

by standing right next to me when I slept. For fifteen days I was questioned shackled. I persisted in arguing that I was a South Korean but I had to remain in shackles because no one believed me. The ten days I was confined in the security service

jail was traumatic. The Chinese inmates were quite free to do what they wanted

but we, two North Korean females, were starved for three days. We could not go

to the bathroom freely, we did not have toilet paper and were treated as animals.

The Chinese Security Service sent us to Tandong Detention Center where thirty

out of fifty inmates at the detention center were North Koreans. The female Chinese

Security Service guards stripped us naked and made us jump 30 times to see if we

hid any money in our vagina. They even tried searching by inserting their hands

in our vagina. I had swallowed 400 yuan anticipating that I would be searched thoroughly and was badly treated until I was repatriated to a jail of the Security Affairs

Agency in Shinuiju, Pyunganbuk-do North Korea early December. We were treated

like animals for the twenty days detained in jail. Women were both impregnated

and contracted venereal diseases during their confinement in China. No one was

normal. Pretty women were confined in a solitary room to be used as sex toys. The

inmates were beaten and given 50 grams of half-cooked maize filled with insects.

A pregnant woman used to bite off and eat her own nails because she was craving

for food. A woman with venereal disease would rub salt on her lower body out of

pain. Could you believe this is a place for human beings?

The other women were caught in China but since Chunsil and I were caught trying to defect to South Korea, our punishment was more severe. We were locked up

in separate rooms beaten with clubs. I developed hemorrhoids and wasn’t able to

sit on the cold floor of the jail. I had to lie face down with my bottom up in the

air moaning like a mosquito. After 20 days I was sent to a detention center where

they began to select inmates to release after seven weeks. I thought I would be released because I was selected as a monitor before anyone else but I realized they

were just going to release me as an example to prove that even those who were repatriated from China are released. I found out that I was to be arrested again when

I reached home. I limped my way to Musan, Hankyungbuk-do arriving at Hamhung

station on the morning of January 1st. All my family members except two brothers

were dead and I wasn’t able to find out about my son, if he was alive or not.

With a heavy heart, I crossed the ice thin waters from Musan at 3 in the afternoon to China. This time I was fortunate to meet kind ethnic Koreans who I stayed

with for seven weeks doing odd jobs. With their help, I returned to Weihai and hid

myself in the office of a Korean company. For three months, I hid up in the mountains whenever the Chinese Security Service searched the area. I left in October

19

2000 and passed through four Southeast Asian countries within a span of four

months and arrived in South Korea January 14, 2002. I could fill up thousands of

pages about my suffering in jails but I would like to stop here.

I would like to ask the human right activists and those working for human rights

in North Korea to expose the human right abuses inflicted by the feudal and corrupt

North Korean government to the world so that the people in North Korea could escape from a life of humiliation and live freely as soon as possible.

Senator BROWNBACK. Mrs. Ji, thank you very much for your

heartfelt testimony and your incredible struggle for liberty. It is

quite a testimony to all of us.

I have a few questions I would like to ask.

And this is not on the program, but I would like to invite up a

representative of the South Korean abductee organization, if they

would like to come forward to the desk here to be able to give a

minute or 2 about their situation. I believe the abductee person to

come forward would be Dr. Jai Nam. He is with the Citizens Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees.

If you would like to come forward now while we do this questioning, I would appreciate that.

Mrs. Ji, am I pronouncing her name correctly?

Mrs. JI. Yes, sir.

Senator BROWNBACK. You just got out of North Korea in 2002.

Is that correct?

Mrs. JI. I left North Korea in 1998 but arrived in South Korea

in January 2002.

Senator BROWNBACK. So you spent 4 years then, if I understand

your testimony, in China and several other countries, making your

way to South Korea. Is that correct?

Mrs. JI. There is no way I could go to South Korea directly from

China, but with the help of a South Korean Christian minister, I

was able to journey through Vietnam, Cambodia, and finally Thailand from which I was able to go to South Korea.

Senator BROWNBACK. From 1998 to 2002, was most of that time

spent in China and then just the last portion of it in transit

through those three additional countries?

Mrs. JI. I spent a year of ordeal in China. I was captured, sent

back to North Korea, spent half more year there, again subject to

severe torture and harsh treatment. Then I escaped North Korea

again, another year in China, not just in China but Vietnam and

Cambodia and other places. Even in Vietnam I had to go through

horrible trouble. I was caught once by the Vietnamese authorities

as well.

Senator BROWNBACK. My point is because of your status as a refugee in North Korea and because of the harsh treatment that the

Chinese give to North Koreans in China, you were subjected to horrific situations, sexual slavery, horrible conditions in China because

the Chinese continue to hunt down North Korean refugees. Is that

correct?

Mrs. JI. Yes, that was correct, and because I had to go through

this ordeal because I knew once I was caught, sent back to North

Korea, then I knew that I would be killed.

Senator BROWNBACK. In my estimation the Chinese Government

is complicit in this by its harsh treatment of North Korean refugees, and this is counter to agreements that China has signed with

the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees that they would not send

20

back refugees to a home country, in this case North Korea, where

they know those refugees will be harshly treated, subject to imprisonment, if not death. And yet, the Chinese Government continues

to hunt down North Korean refugees in China, subject them to the

harshest of conditions inside China, and is complicit clearly in the

horrific treatment that North Koreans are receiving particularly in

China because as a refugee then, you have to hide, are sold to different people to be able to keep away from the Chinese authorities.

You do not need to translate that in the interest of time. I really

would like to just ask her, do you know of others or are there many

others in North Korea who would like to escape but who cannot

risk the journey that you took?

Mrs. JI. There are many who would like to escape from North

Korea.

Senator BROWNBACK. Do many try and we do not know about it,

or are they fearful and do not try?

Mrs. JI. Those who live in the northern province of Hangyangdo

in North Korea are familiar with the border with the Chinese. So

they are the ones who can attempt to escape or actually succeed

in escaping. But if you are talking about the people who live in the

south province Hamhung where I come from, although they want

to escape and go to South Korea, they have just no way how they

can achieve that.

Senator BROWNBACK. If there was an established refugee camp

in China or Mongolia, where there would be not easy passage, but

there would be safety once you achieved that location, would a

number of people leave North Korea for the refugee camp?

Mrs. JI. I would believe that many would attempt to escape

North Korea once they know, given information that there are refugee camps that will protect the safety of the refugees.

Senator BROWNBACK. Would there be thousands that would leave

if they know they could get relatively safe passage to another country, once they made it to China?

Mrs. JI. It is really not easy. I would rather say it is difficult to

guess exactly how many people would attempt to escape North

Korea if that condition is met. But nevertheless, I would think

around 60 percent of the entire people in North Korea would like

to leave their country.

Senator BROWNBACK. What percent?

Mr. KIM. Around 60; 6, 0.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you very much for joining us today.

God bless you for your courage to do this.

Mrs. JI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator BROWNBACK. Dr. Jai Nam with the Citizens Coalition for

Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees. We

worked you in the program, and the chairman in his office was

willing to bring you in just for a quick 2 minutes about what it is

your organization does and how many South Koreans abducted into

North Korea do you think there are?

21

STATEMENT OF DR. JAI NAM, CITIZENS COALITION FOR

HUMAN RIGHTS OF ABDUCTEES AND NORTH KOREAN REFUGEES

Dr. NAM. Yes, Your Honor, indeed. We are the delegates representing South Korean abductees detained in North Korea.

During the Korean War, more than 80,000 civilians were abducted to North Korea, and afterward until January 2000, the total

number of 486 were abducted. Those are detained in North Korea.

Till now, due to the lack of support and the negligence of the

South Korean Government, our movement has not been activated

well. Since we are here visiting the United States, the U.S. Congress, and the United Nations. We are supposed to meet the Secretary of the United Nations. Also like to visit North Korean Embassy in New York and to representing our situation.

Well, let me tell you something. At this moment, one of South

Korean abductees was safely escaped to the South Korean Embassy

in Beijing. His name is Kim Byong Do. So hopefully he can safely

return to South Korea. This is all. They left a little memo for me.

Senator BROWNBACK. How long ago was he abducted?

Dr. NAM. It did not say. It could be mid-eighties.

Senator BROWNBACK. But he is now in the South Korean Embassy in Beijing but has not been allowed to pass to South Korea

yet.

Dr. NAM. Not yet.

Senator BROWNBACK. We will hope the Chinese Government will

work to allow his safe passage on to South Korea.

Dr. NAM. Yes.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you very much for being here and

coming by to see me and being willing to stop here at the committee.

Dr. NAM. Your Honor, one additional thing is hopefully if he

comes to South Korea, if you invite him to the Senate hearing, we

will deeply appreciate it.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you.

Our third panel is Dr. Kongdan Oh Hassig, research staff member, Institute for Defense Analyses; Ms. Debra Liang-Fenton, executive director of The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North

Korea; Dr. Stephen Linton, chairman, Eugene Bell Foundation; and

Dr. Marcus Noland, senior fellow of the Institute for International

Economics. If you would all please come forward, we would appreciate your testimony. Thank you all very much for joining us.

Dr. Kongdan Hassig, if you would please start out. Your full testimony will be put into the record. So you are free to summarize.

Because of our hour and we have a set of stacked votes at 3:30,

I will run the clock here at 5 minutes to give you a warning here

of time. That is not a hard time period, but if you could keep the

testimony fairly tight so we could have some questions, I would appreciate that very much.

STATEMENT OF KONGDAN OH HASSIG, PH.D., RESEARCH

STAFF MEMBER, INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES, ALEXANDRIA, VA

Dr. HASSIG. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, colleagues, and guests, I am extremely pleased to appear

22

before you to discuss North Korea’s social structure. I have been

asked specifically to say a few words about the North Korean regime’s political classification system.

My brief presentation is in two parts: first, on North Korea’s social structure in theory; and second, on social structure in reality.

No dictatorship can afford to grant its people social and political

equality, but the North Korean regime has constructed a more

elaborate model of political stratification, discrimination, and persecution than most dictatorships, thanks in part to the fact that

the current ruler, Kim Jong-il, and his late father, Kim Il-sung,

have had over 50 years to perfect their political system.

It is not uncommon to distinguish between those who, we believe,

are with us and those who are against us. This is the basis of the

political classification system in North Korea. In this case, ‘‘with

us’’ is supposed to mean ‘‘with the North Korean people in their

struggle to achieve socialism.’’ However, as the political classification system is used by the authorities, ‘‘with us’’ actually means ‘‘personally loyal to Kim Jong-il and his regime.’’ The following brief description of the Kim regime’s three-part political classification system is condensed from a description in the

book ‘‘North Korea through the Looking Glass’’ that I co-authored

with Ralph Charles Hassig. A similar description also may be

found in the annual white papers on human rights published by

the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, Korea.

Since the 1950s, the Kim regime has subjected its people to a series of political examinations in order to sort out those who are presumed to be loyal or disloyal to the regime. After a 3-year period

of examination that began in 1967, then-President Kim Il-sung reported to the Fifth Korean Workers’ Party Congress in 1970 that

the people could be classified into three political groups: a loyal

core class, a suspect wavering class, and a politically unreliable

hostile class.

Individuals are further classified into 51 subcategories, such as

those in the wavering class who had been landowners before the

Communists came to power, or those who had resided in the southern half of Korea before 1945, which is the year of liberation from

Japanese colonialism. The political history of one’s parents, grandparents, and relatives as distant as second cousins, is also a determining factor in the classification process. As of the most recent

Party Congress, which was held in 1980, approximately 25 percent

of the population fell into the core class, 50 percent fell into the wavering class, and the remaining unfortunate 25 percent were relegated to the hostile class.

An individual’s political loyalty is likely to be reexamined anytime he or she comes to the attention of the authorities, for example, when being considered for a job, housing, or travel permit.

One’s political classification is not a matter of public knowledge,

nor is it known to the individual, but it is recorded in the personal

record that follows every North Korean throughout life, and of

course, becomes a part of the record of that person’s children and

relatives as well.

Only people classified as politically loyal can hope to obtain responsible positions in North Korean society. People classified as

members of the wavering class are unlikely to be considered for

23

membership in the Korean Workers Party. People who fall into the

hostile class are discriminated against in terms of employment,

food, housing, medical care, and place of residence.

This classification system is obviously an inefficient means of determining how committed a person is to socialism, or how loyal to

the Kim regime. Many people with drive and talent, who in fact are

patriotic North Koreans, are prevented from participating fully in

North Korean life because their official record has been tainted by

the historical political affiliations of ancestors and relatives. But for

the Kim regime, people are largely expendable, and it appears to

be the viewpoint of the regime that it is better to be safe than sorry

when it comes to ensuring regime security.

Now that I have briefly outlined this elaborate political classification system, which I think tells us a lot about the mind set of the

North Korean leaders and their ideal for a utopian controlled North

Korea society, let me caution you that appearance does not match

reality.

North Korean society is full of corruption. A North Korean’s political history and the history of his or her parents, grandparents,

and even distant relatives does, indeed, influence that person’s life

changes. But what matters even more is money.

North Korea’s socialist economy does not work. Most people live

in poverty. Millions are constantly hungry. Government and party

officials, including members of the several police and party organizations that compile and use this political information, bend the

rules to make life better for themselves and their families.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that North Korean society runs on bribes. It has become a way of life: a universal tax

in a country that boasts that the people are free of taxation. All

of the necessities that I mentioned above—employment, food, medical care, housing and place of residence—can be purchased illegally. Protection from arrest or release from jail is likewise for sale.

Only if one’s case comes to the personal attention of Kim Jong-il,

who has everything, is bribery of no use.

In closing, let me suggest what this information about political

classification tells us about the North Korean social structure

today. That structure is broken. North Korea is not in fact a socialist economic system. Almost everyone turns to the underground

market economy to survive. There is no rule of law. Only the rule

of money and power.

North Korean society is unstable as it lurches from one crisis to

the next. But people have become adept at adjusting to circumstances, looking out for themselves and their families, and

when possible, helping their neighbors and townspeople.

Yet, because most North Koreans cannot leave their country and

because none of them can contest the political system, social disorder in North Korea remains largely contained and will continue

to be contained until people become aware of political alternatives

to living under the Kim regime.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Hassig follows:]

24

1The views expressed in this testimony do not necessarily represent those of the Institute for

Defense Analyses or its clients.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF KONGDAN OH HASSIG,1 INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES

POLITICAL CLASSIFICATION AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN NORTH KOREA

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, colleagues, and guests. I am pleased

to appear before you to discuss North Korea’s social structure. I have been asked

to say a few words specifically about the North Korean regime’s political classification system.

My brief presentation is in two parts: First, on North Korea’s social structure in

theory, and second, on social structure in reality.

No dictatorship can afford to grant its people social and political equality, but the

North Korean regime has constructed a more elaborate model of political stratification, discrimination, and persecution than most dictatorships, thanks in part to the

fact that the current ruler, Kim Jong-il, and his late father, Kim Il-sung, have had

over 50 years to perfect their political system.

It is not uncommon to distinguish between those who (we believe) are with us and

those who are against us. This is the basis of the political classification system in

North Korea. In this case, ‘‘with us’’ is supposed to mean ‘‘with the North Korean

people in their struggle to achieve socialism.’’ However, as the political classification

system is used by the authorities, ‘‘with us’’ instead means ‘‘personally loyal to the

Kim Jong-il and his regime.’’

The following brief description of the Kim regime’s three-part political classification system is condensed from a description in the book ‘‘North Korea through the

Looking Glass’’ that I co-authored with Ralph C. Hassig. A similar description may

be found in the annual white papers on human rights published by the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

Since the 1950s, the Kim regime has subjected its people to a series of political

examinations in order to sort out those who are presumed to be loyal or disloyal

to the regime. After a three-year period of examination that began in 1967, thenpresident Kim Il-sung reported to the Fifth Korean Workers’ Party Congress in 1970

that the people could be classified into three political groups: a loyal ‘‘core class,’’

a suspect ‘‘wavering class,’’ and a politically unreliable ‘‘hostile class.’’

Individuals are further classified into 51 subcategories, such as those in the wavering class who had been landowners before the communists came to power, or

those who had resided in the southern half of Korea before 1945. The political history of one’s parents, grandparents, and relatives as distant as second cousins is

also a determining factor in the classification process. As of the most recent Party

Congress, which was held in 1980, approximately 25 percent of the population fell

into the core class, 50 percent fell into the wavering class, and the remaining unfortunate 25 percent were relegated to the hostile class.

An individual’s political loyalty is likely to be re-examined anytime he or she

comes to the attention of the authorities, for example when being considered for a

job, housing, or travel permit. One’s political classification is not a matter of public

knowledge, nor is it known to the individual, but it is recorded in the personal

record that follows every North Korean throughout life, and of course becomes part

of the record of that person’s children and relatives as well.

Only people classified as politically loyal can hope to obtain responsible positions

in North Korean society. People classified as members of the wavering class are unlikely to be considered for membership in the Korean Workers Party. People who

fall into the hostile class are discriminated against in terms of employment, food,

housing, medical care, and place of residence.

This classification system is obviously an inefficient means of determining how

committed a person is to socialism, or how loyal to the Kim regime. Many people

with drive and talent, who in fact are patriotic North Koreans, are prevented from

participating fully in North Korean life because their official record has been tainted

by the historical political affiliations of ancestors or relatives. But for the Kim regime, people are largely expendable, and it appears to be the viewpoint of the regime that it is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to ensuring regime security.

Now that I have briefly outlined this elaborate political classification system,

which I think tells us a lot about the mindset of the North Korean leaders and their

ideal for a utopian, controlled North Korean society, let me caution that appearance

does not match reality.

25

North Korean society is full of corruption. A North Korean’s political history, and

the history of his or her parents, grandparents, and even distant relatives, does indeed influence that person’s life chances. But what matters even more is money.

North Korea’s socialist economy does not work. Most people live in poverty. Millions are constantly hungry. Government and party officials, including members of

the several police and party organizations that compile and use this political information, bend the rules to make life better for themselves and their families.

I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that North Korean society runs on

bribes. It has become a way of life: a universal tax in a country that boasts that

its people are free of taxation. All of the necessities that I mentioned above—employment, food, medical care, housing and place of residence—can be purchased illegally. Protection from arrest or release from jail is likewise for sale. Only if one’s

case comes to the personal attention of Kim Jong-il, who has everything, is bribery

of no use.

In closing, let me suggest what this information about political classification tells

us about North Korea’s social structure. That structure is broken. North Korea is

not in fact a socialist economic system. Almost everyone turns to the underground

market economy to survive. There is no rule of law. Only the rule of money and

power.

North Korean society is unstable as it lurches from one crisis to the next. But people have become adept at adjusting to circumstances, looking out for themselves and

their families, and when possible helping their neighbors and townspeople.

Yet because most North Koreans cannot leave their country, and because none of

them can contest the political system, social disorder in North Korea remains largely contained, and will continue to be contained until people become aware of political alternatives to living under the Kim regime.

Thank you.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you very much. That is powerful

thought and testimony.

Ms. Liang-Fenton, thank you very much for joining us.

STATEMENT OF DEBRA LIANG-FENTON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, U.S. COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH

KOREA, WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. LIANG-FENTON. Thank you. On behalf of the U.S. Committee

for Human Rights in North Korea, I would like to thank the chairs

and organizers of the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs for convening this hearing. In particular, I want to thank you,

Senator Brownback, for your perseverance and continued work on

the pressing issue of human rights in North Korea.

In my written submission, I have provide the subcommittee with

my full testimony, outlining some of the key elements of the human

rights nightmare underway in North Korea. Today I would like to

highlight briefly some aspects of human rights abuse in North

Korea with an emphasis on the prison camp system. The committee’s researcher, David Hawk, is currently completing a report on

this subject for publication this summer. In it, we hope to be able

to provide the satellite images of many of the political prison camps

and detention centers being used by the Kim Jong-il regime to

exact punishment on those categorized as offenders. I will round

out my testimony with policy recommendations that may help remedy some of these problems.

For over 50 years, the people of the Democratic People’s Republic

of Korea have been denied even the most basic of their human

rights. Human rights violations and abuses affect a large majority

of the 23 million North Korean people. As Dr. Oh Hassig has just

illustrated, there are tight social and religious controls. Access to

food and health care is based on a system of loyalty to the regime.

26

With respect to the political prisoners, prisons, and labor camps,

since the turn of the millennium a growing number of North Korean defectors have obtained asylum in South Korea. A number of

these North Korean defectors were either prisoners or guards in a

variety of prison camps and detention/punishment facilities in

North Korea. Their fragments of information continue to accumulate and now afford a closer look at the North Korean system of

forced labor camps and the unimaginable atrocities taking place in

Kim Jong-il’s North Korea.

From the accumulated information, it is possible to outline two

distinct systems of incarceration in North Korea. Both of these exhibit exceptional violations of internationally recognized human

rights norms: an extremely brutal gulag of political penal-labor

colonies called kwan-li-so, along with prison-labor facilities called

kyo-hwa-so; and a separate, but also extremely brutal system of

imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and forced labor for North

Koreans who are forcibly repatriated from China. This latter incarceration system includes jails along the China-North Korea border

run by several different police agencies. Whatever the category, all

the prison facilities are characterized by very large numbers of

deaths in detention from forced hard labor accompanied by deliberate sub-subsistence food rations. The incarceration system for Koreans repatriated from China includes routine torture during interrogation and the abominable practice of ethnic infanticide inflicted

upon pregnant women forcibly repatriated from China.

The most strikingly abnormal characteristic of the prison camp

system is the feature of collective responsibility, or guilt by association, wherein the mothers and fathers, sisters, and brothers, children, and sometimes grandchildren of the offending political prisoner are also imprisoned in this three-generation arrangement.

Former prisoners and guards trace the practice to a 1972 statement by Great Leader Kim Il-sung. Factionalists or enemies of

class, whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through

three generations. According to the testimony of a former guard at

kwan-li-so number 11, this slogan was carved in wood in the prison

guards headquarters building.

The other strikingly abnormal characteristic of this system is

that the prisoners are not arrested or charged, that is, told of their

offense, or tried in any sort of trial or judicial procedure where they

can have a chance to confront their accusers or offer a defense with

or without benefit of legal counsel.

The most salient feature of day-to-day prison labor camp life is

the below subsistence food rations, coupled with extremely hard

labor. Prisoners are provided only enough food to be kept perpetually on the verge of starvation. It is important to note that subsistence food rations precede by decades the nationwide food shortages of the 1990s.

I just want to show you a picture. This was an illustration done

by one of the Gilsu family children while in hiding in China. This

is Dae Han Gilsu at Amsang labor prison. This illustrates his meal

which consists of a husk of corn, sesame seed dregs, cabbages, and

the water used to wash the rice.

Most basically the prison camp system is an outgrowth of the

broader North Korean system for dealing with petty criminals

27

charged or convicted of what would be considered in the United

States to be misdemeanor offenses, except that many of these

minor offenses would not be normally considered criminal, traveling within the country or leaving one’s village or not appearing

at the designated work site without official authorization or for

leaving the country, a right guaranteed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which North Korea is a state

party, which should not be criminalized at all.

Senator Brownback, you know very well the situation with the

refugees in China, so I will just make three points on that subject.

It is the nature of the political system in North Korea, with its

discriminatory distribution of resources that makes feeding a family impossible in some areas. Being hungry does not necessarily

prevent these people from also being oppressed. The criminal, political, and social persecution that accompanies forcible return to

North Korea surely makes these people political refugees once they

are in China.

I will skip now to the policy recommendations and list some concrete steps that may help to improve the human rights of North

Korean residents and refugees.

One, emphasize human rights in policy. President Bush and all

other government officials should take every opportunity publicly

and privately to express concern for the plight of the North Korean

people and the U.S. commitment to assisting in the restoration of

their rights and well-being. During their most recent meeting,

President Roh indicated at one point that without the help of the

United States in 1950, he might be in a prison camp of Kim Jongil today. President Bush should have pressed President Roh on this

point by way of emphasizing the need to address the human rights

crisis in North Korea.

Two, pressure the North Korean regime to close down its brutal

and repressive prison camp system.

Three, pressure the North Korean Government to cease criminalizing the act of leaving the country without permission and severely punishing those who are forcibly repatriated.

Four, the protections offered by U.S. law and policy to refugee

populations in danger should be extended to North Korean refugees

in China.

Five, urge the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to take immediate action to press China to fulfill its obligations under the

1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and end its

practice of cooperating in the forced repatriation of North Koreans.

Six, press the UNHCR to invoke binding arbitration of the 1995

agreement it has with the Chinese Government to secure its

unimpeded access to North Korean refugees.

Seven, encourage the Chinese Government to allow the UNHCR

to operate under its full mandate, according to the 1995 agreement.

As China enters prominence in the international arena, it must

take on the responsibilities commensurate with its status.

Eight, help create an interim resettlement area in third-party

countries such as Mongolia to alleviate China of the burden of accommodating large numbers of refugees on its soil. Senator

Brownback, you put it well in your paper, ‘‘Mercy in Short Supply.’’

28

The nations of the world, including the United States, should be

prepared to share the burden of refugee resettlement.

Nine, ensure that independent assistance organizations can provide famine and medical relief to the people most in need and can

verify that this relief is reaching those whom it is intended to help.

It is especially important that the distribution and monitoring of

food aid be put in the hands of humanitarian assistance organizations and at a minimum be made transparent.

Ten, find new ways to provide information to the people of North

Korea, thus ending their enforced isolation. Develop multiple channels of exchange and contact. Increase radio broadcasting like

Radio Free Asia.

Eleven, develop and implement an international agreement modeled on the Helsinki Final Act, which linked Western recognition

of the post-World War II borders of central Europe to a comprehensive set of human rights principles. While there is not much reason

to believe that North Korea would honor such an agreement, the

need at this time is to start a process. A Helsinki agreement for

the Korean Peninsula could offer a lever with which to curb

Pyongyang’s worst abuses, open North Korea to greater international scrutiny, and help break down the isolation of the North

Korean people.

Twelve, U.S. Members of Congress should strategize and coordinate with counterparts in South Korea, Japan, and Europe on improving national laws to help the North Korean people. Such an

initiative is currently underway. The next meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Working Group on Human Rights in North Korea is

scheduled to convene here in this building on July 16 as part of a

larger conference on Human Rights in North Korea. Senator

Brownback, I hope we may look to you to play a key role in this

session.

And thirteen, pressure companies investing in or planning to invest in North Korea to develop a code of conduct similar to the Sullivan principles that were applied in South Africa to protect workers and other citizens.

There have been important changes in North Korea in the past

5 years. The crisis of the regime is deepening, as corruption becomes endemic and the regime begins to lose its grip on the monopoly of information. The flow of North Koreans across the border

with China has begun to open up the country. Radios are being

smuggled back into North Korea in large numbers. One defector estimates that up to half of the North Korean population has or has

access to a radio that can received AM/FM broadcasts from outside

the country, and large numbers of people, including military officers, are listening to the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia

broadcasts in Korean. One of the most important things that the

United States can do is to increase radio broadcasting of news, information, and ideas aimed at the North Korean population.

The United States should make human rights a major component

of its relations with North Korea equal with the demand that

North Korea stop developing nuclear weapons. If the United States

only or mainly focuses on the nuclear issue, it risks Kim Jong-il’s

using that issue to shore up support for his regime.

Senator BROWNBACK. Let us wrap it on up, if we could here.

29

Ms. LIANG-FENTON. Thank you.

Senator BROWNBACK. I appreciate your thoughts, but I want to

make sure we can get everybody before we have that series of

votes.

Ms. LIANG-FENTON. Just to say that we do not want to deflect

attention away from domestic failings of the regime. It will be easy

for him to foment national sentiment if we just focus on the nuclear issue.

Anyhow, I just want to say that now is the time to expose the

brutality of the North Korean regime, and it is time to rise to the

challenge and makes human rights in North Korea a U.S. policy

priority. The people of North Korea deserve no less. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Liang-Fenton follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DEBRA LIANG-FENTON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, U.S.

COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA

Today, I would like to highlight briefly some of aspects of human rights abuse in

North Korea, with an emphasis on the prison camp system. The Committee’s researcher, David Hawk, is currently completing a report on this subject for publication this summer. In it, we hope to be able to provide the satellite images of many

of the political prison camps and detention centers being used by the Kim Jong-il

regime to exact punishment on those categorized as offenders. I will round out my

testimony with policy recommendations that may help remedy some of these problems.

I. HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA

For over 50 years the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, have

been denied even the most basic of their human rights. Human rights violations and

abuses affect a large majority of the 23 million North Korean people.

A. Social and religious control

The population is subjected to a constant barrage of propaganda by governmentcontrolled media. The opinions of North Koreans are monitored by government security. Independent public gatherings are not allowed, and all organizations are created and controlled by the government. The government forcibly resettles politically

suspect families. Private property does not exist. Religious freedom does not exist.

The ‘‘religious’’ activity that is allowed appears to have one of two purposes: to deify

the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung, and by extension his son the current leader,

Kim Jong-Il; or to demonstrate to faith-based aid groups that some traditional religious activity is tolerated.

B. Access to food and health care

The government of the DPRK divides the entire society into three classes: ‘‘core,’’

‘‘wavering,’’ and ‘‘hostile;’’ there are further subdivisions based on an assessment of

loyalty to the regime. As a result, as many as 18 million people may be denied equal

access to decent education, employment, housing, medical care and food. Children

are denied adequate education and are punished because of the loyalty classification

of members of their families. Between 1995 and 1998, North Korea lost at least one

million of its 24 million people to famine, food shortages, and related disease. The

DPRK has refused to allow humanitarian aid organizations to assess the full extent

of the crisis. Reports persist that food is being distributed on the basis of loyalty

to the state, effectively leaving out those most in need.

C. Political prisoners, prisons and labor camps (kwa-li-sos)

Since the turn of the millennium, a growing number of North Korean defectors

and escapees have obtained asylum in South Korea. A number of these North Korean defectors were either prisoners or guards in the variety of prison camps and

detention/punishment facilities in North Korea. Their ‘‘fragments’’ of information

continue to accumulate and now afford a closer look at the North Korean system

of forced labor camps and the ‘‘unimaginable atrocities’’ taking place in Kim JungIl’s North Korea.

From the accumulated information, it is possible to outline two distinct systems

of incarceration in North Korea. Both of these exhibit exceptional violations of international recognized human rights: an extremely brutal ‘‘gulag’’ of political penalVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:26 Oct 29, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 89499 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
30

1While the ‘‘right to leave’’ is an internationally recognized ‘‘human right,’’ there is no corresponding ‘‘right’’ to enter another country, which remain within the sovereign rights of states.

labor colonies, called kwan-li-so in Korean, along with prison-labor facilities, called

kyo-hwa-so; and a separate but also extremely brutal system of imprisonment, interrogation, torture and forced labor for North Koreans who are forcibly repatriated

from China. This latter incarceration system includes jails, along the China-North

Korea border run by several different police agencies: short term provincial level detention-labor centers, and even shorter term more localized detention-labor facilities,

called labor training camps. The political penal labor colonies include the repressive

phenomena of life-time sentences for not only perceived political wrongdoers, but

‘‘guilt by association’’ for up to three generations of the wrongdoers families. Whatever the category, all the prison facilities are characterized by very large numbers

of deaths in detention from forced hard labor accompanied by deliberate sub-subsistence food rations. The incarceration system for Koreans repatriated from China includes routine torture during interrogation and the abominable practice of ethnic infanticide inflicted upon pregnant women forcibly repatriated from China.

The system of detention facilities and punishments for North Korean’s repatriated

from China is, in some ways, a separate phenomena from the life-time and longerterm imprisonment in the political prison camps and prison-labor camps. But this

shorter-term detention/punishment system is related in that both the provincial detention centers and the labor training centers use the same distorted, degenerate

reform-through-labor practices as the kwan-li-so and kyo-hwa-so. Both the long-term

imprisonment and short-term detention facilities are characterized by below subsistence level food rations and very high levels of deaths-in-detention. And both the

long term and short term detention facilities, and the police jails and interrogation

centers that feed them are administered by both the Peoples Safety Agency police

(who run the kyo-hwa-so prison-labor camps) and the National Security Agency police (who run the kwan-li-so).

Most basically, the system is an outgrowth of the North Korean system for dealing with petty criminals charged or convicted of what would be considered in the

United States to be misdemeanor offenses: short-term detention in provincial or subprovincial detention facilities combined with the practice of reform-through-labor.

Except that many of these ‘‘minor’’ offenses would not be normally considered criminal—traveling within the country, or leaving one’s village, or not appearing at the

designated work site without official authorization, etc. Or for leaving the country—

a right guaranteed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (to

which the DPRK is a State Party), which should not be criminalized at all.1

D. North Korean refugees in China

The situation of North Korean refugees in China is desperate, and in many ways,

it is a symptom of a larger, more pervasive problem. And that is the brutal nature

of the repressive, totalitarian regime in Pyongyang. Leaving the DPRK is considered

treason, punishable by long prison terms or execution. Yet the Voice of America estimates that as many as 300,000 North Koreans have fled-to China. With the onset

of famine in the early 1990’s, tens of thousands of North Koreans—the majority undernourished women and children—crossed into China’s northeastern provinces.

North Korean refugees currently in China live in fear of arrest, many women forced

into prostitution or abusive marriages. Refugees are pursued by agents of the North

Korean Public Security Service, and many are forcibly returned to the DPRK. The

South China Morning Post has reported that the Chinese government has been offering rewards to those delivering North Korean refugees to police.

China claims that it considers these refugees to be purely economic migrants.

While hunger may be one motive for their movement, there are other realities:

1. It is the nature of the political system in North Korea, with its discriminatory distribution of resources that makes feeding a family impossible in some

areas.

2. Being hungry does not necessarily prevent these people from also feeling

oppressed.

3. The criminal, political and social persecution that accompanies forcible return to North Korea surely makes these people ‘‘political’’ refugees once they are

in China.

China is a party to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees,

under which it has agreed not to expel refugees to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened. It has also signed the 1967 Protocol to the Convention,

promising cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. And the PRC

31

is a party to the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which says that no state can

return a refugee to a country where there are substantial grounds for believing that

he or she will be tortured. In addition, it is a party to the 1995 agreement with the

UNHCR—Article 3 stating that ‘‘In consultation and cooperation with the Government, UNHCR personnel may at all times have unimpeded access to refugees and

to the sites of UNHCR projects in order to monitor all phases of their implementation.’’

II. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

North Korean authorities deny that the practices described in this testimony exist

and that human rights violations occur. Such governmental denials cannot be taken

at face value. The only real way for North Korea to contradict or invalidate the

claims and stories of the refugee accounts, especially with respect to the prison

camps, is by inviting United Nations officials or representatives of the UN Human

Rights Commission, or reputable human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, to verify or invalidate the allegations of former

prisoners. Otherwise the refugee testimony stands.

In the event that North Korean authorities decline to engage in constructive and

substantive dialogue with UN human rights officials as the recent resolution by the

UN Commission on Human Rights requested, it can only be hoped that sufficient

resources will be found to enable South Korean NGOs or independent human rights

bodies to more thoroughly and systematically document the violations outlined in

the Committee’s report.

I will now list concrete steps to achieve the policy objective of improving the

human rights of North Korean residents and refugees.

1. Emphasize human rights in policy. President Bush and all other government officials should take every opportunity (publicly and privately) to express

concern for the plight of the North Korean people and U.S. commitment to assisting in the restoration of their rights and wellbeing. During their most recent

meeting, President Roh indicated at one point that without the help of the U.S.

in 1950, he might be in a prison camp [of Kim Jong Ii] today. President Bush

should have pressed President Roh on this point by way of emphasizing the

need to address the human rights crisis in North Korea.

2. Pressure the North Korean regime to close down its brutal and repressive

prison camp system.

3. Pressure the North Korean government to cease criminalizing the act of

leaving the country without permission and severely punishing those who are

forcibly repatriated.

4. The protections offered by U.S. law and policy to refugee populations in

danger should be extended to North Korean refugees in China.

5. Urge the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to take immediate action

to press China to fulfill its obligations under the 1951 Convention Relating to

the Status of Refugees, and end its practice of cooperating in the forced repatriation of North Koreans.

6. Press the UNHCR to invoke binding arbitration of the 1995 agreement

it has with the Chinese government to secure its unimpeded access to North

Korean refugees.

7. Encourage the Chinese government to allow the UNHCR to operate under

its full mandate according to the 1995 agreement. As China enters prominence

in the international arena, it must take on the responsibilities commensurate

with its status.

8. Help create an interim resettlement area in third-party countries such as

Mongolia to alleviate China of the burden of accommodating large numbers of

refugees on its soil.

9. Ensure that independent assistance organizations can provide famine and

medical relief to the people most in need and can verify that this relief is reaching those whom it is intended to help. It is especially important that the distribution and monitoring of food aid be put in the hands of humanitarian assistance organizations, and at a minimum be made transparent.

10. Find new ways to provide information to the people of North Korea, thus

ending their enforced isolation. Develop multiple channels of exchange and contact. Increase radio broadcasting like Radio Free Asia to North Korea.

11. Develop and implement an international agreement modeled on the Helsinki Final Act, which linked Western recognition of the post-World War II borVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:26 Oct 29, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 89499 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
32

ders of Central Europe to a comprehensive set of human rights principles.

While there is less reason to believe that North Korea would honor such an

agreement, the need at this time is to start a process. A Helsinki agreement

for the Korean peninsula could offer a lever with which to curb Pyongyang’s worst abuses, open North Korea to greater international scrutiny, and help

break down the isolation of the North Korean people.

12. U.S. Members of Congress should strategize and coordinate with counterparts in South Korea, Japan, and Europe on improving legislation to help the

North Korean people. Such an initiative is currently being implemented. The

next meeting of the Inter-parliamentary working group on human rights in

North Korea is scheduled to convene here in this building on July 16 as part

of a larger conference on human rights in North Korea.

13. Pressure companies investing in (or planning to invest in) North Korea

to develop a code of conduct similar to the Sullivan principles that were applied

in South Africa to protect workers and other citizens.

These are all feasible first steps that could lay the foundation for more far-reaching changes in the future.

III. CONCLUSION

There have been important changes in North Korea in the past five years. The

crisis of the regime is deepening, as corruption becomes endemic and the regime begins to lose its grip on the monopoly of information. The flow of North Koreans

across the border with China has begun to open up the country. Radios are being

smuggled back in to North Korea in large numbers. These radios are very inexpensive to purchase in China because labor is so cheap and because these devices are

radio-cassette players, and their producers want to dispose of them quickly as the

consumer market switches to CDs. One defector estimates that up to half of the

North Korean population has or has access to a radio that can receive AM/FM

broadcasts from outside the country, and large numbers of people (including, military officers) are listening to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia broadcasts in

Korean. One of the most important things that the United States can do is to increase radio broadcasting of news, information, and ideas aimed at the North Korean population. An important task now is to deluge people in society with information and raise their awareness.

The United States should make human rights a major component of its relations

with North Korea, equal with the demand that North Korea stop developing nuclear

weapons. If the United States only (or mainly) focuses on the nuclear issue, it risks

Kim Jong-il’s using that issue to shore up support for his regime. He will have

greater ability to foment nationalist sentiment, by positing the notion that if the

United States has nuclear weapons, why shouldn’t they? This may deflect attention

away from the domestic failings of the regime and may actually strengthen Kim politically at a time when disenchantment with his regime is growing. If the United

States challenges the North Korean regime on its human rights record, however— and in particular demands that it close down the prison camps—this could sour

North Korean people against the regime, and could possibly soften hostile views toward the United States, because they know that the human rights situation in their

country is abysmal.

The issue of North Korean refugees has received and continues to receive increased attention, but now U.S. and international attention must also be focused on

the North Korean gulag. One objective the Committee hopes to achieve with the

publishing of its prison camps report is to create human rights awareness in the

U.S. and in the international community by documenting what is happening in the

concentration camps and showing photographs and/or other evidence. As an example

of the growing need to address this issue, a new NGO devoted to the abolition of

the prison camp system has been launched in Seoul, (NK Gulag) and will try to

heighten awareness among South Koreans as well.

Nowhere in the world today is the abuse of rights so brutal, so comprehensive and

so institutionalized as it is in North Korea. With North Korea attracting attention

for its nuclear program and its illicit-narcotics activities, now is the time to speak

out about the horrible abuses being perpetrated against its own people. The North

Korean people have been oppressed, frightened and enslaved for long enough.

Thank you.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you very much. I am sorry the time

is so short, but we are just under that constraint.

Dr. Linton, thank you very much for joining us today.

33

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN W. LINTON, PH.D., CHAIRMAN,

EUGENE BELL FOUNDATION, CLARKSVILLE, MD

Dr. LINTON. Thank you for inviting me. Chairman Brownback, I

really am pleased to be here, and I think we have someone we

know in common. Sam Lee, who is the head of Eugene Bell’s office

in Washington, interned under you.

Senator BROWNBACK. Yes, he did.

Dr. LINTON. He speaks very highly of you.

As an American, I believe that I have been given a rare, extended glimpse into North Korea that most foreigners have not

been allowed to see. Before sharing some of my thoughts—and I

will keep it as brief as possible—allow me to give a brief explanation for these unique circumstances.

I grew up in a missionary family, third generation missionary

family, in South Korea, graduated from a Korean university, and

actually came down with tuberculosis when I was a grade school

student while I was attending a local Korean school. As a result

of this, I had to spend 9 months with my brother in confinement

in 1956.

I, unfortunately, came down with it again after a bout with typhoid fever in 1979, and during my period of recuperation was able

to attend a table tennis federation meet in Pyongyang, which got

me very excited. I changed course in my graduate studies and

ended up doing a degree in education and ideological inculcation at

Columbia University with a focus on North Korea, and as I finished my degree, I began consulting for people who were interested

in Korea, including Dr. Billy Graham. I accompanied him on his

two trips to North Korea, as well as acted as his interpreter in his

meetings with Kim Il-sung.

I had to choose, though, between academia and humanitarian

work, when in 1995 the North Koreans officially asked for aid. At

the time I started what was almost a research project in trying to

figure out how Korean Americans, particularly churches and social

organizations, could send aid cheaply to North Korea without

breaking U.S. laws, and in conjunction with that, founded the Eugene Bell Foundation.

In 1997 we were asked officially by the North Korean Government to focus on tuberculosis, which is, as they called it, their No.

1, No. 2, and No. 3 most feared disease. While there are no statistics per se, if you go on South Korean statistics for the 1950s and

early 1960s, you can pretty well assume that about 5 percent of the

population have it. So it is really a very serious situation for them.

They have encouraged this largely I think because I had been a

TB patient but also because my parents have operated a TB sanitarium in South Korea for about 30 years.

So from 1997 we switched over and have been raising money and

implementing tuberculosis assistance work there ever since. I

would have to say that as of last year, we were sending assistance

packages—and we have a program that is pretty comprehensive—

to about 60 of their 80 tuberculosis treatment facilities scattered all

over the country. In conjunction with this, I was introduced once

by a military person as the American, other than the pilots of an

SR–71, who has visited North Korea the most frequently. I lost

count after 50 times.

34

Having said this, we have not worked with refugees for obvious

reasons because many, many organizations are able to address

their needs, but the Eugene Bell Foundation has a fairly unique

niche in the country itself.

As many have documented in detail, North Koreans experienced

severe economic shock in the 1990s, and they blame it on natural

disasters. By their own admission, their citizens were too used to

relying on a dependable though modest government subsidy for

food and shelter and whatnot, and were unprepared—in all too

many cases, unable—to adjust to a new economic order where survival depended on individual initiative. As a result, untold numbers starved to death, and I really could not say how many. While

traveling in the countryside in 1997, I witnessed hundreds of displaced people frantically in search of food. It was really one of the

worst experiences I have ever had in my life.

Today life continues to be difficult, but thankfully North Korea’s

economy has begun to improve. I briefly credit this to three things.

One is clearly assistance from the outside, and I think the

United States deserves credit for a lot of that. You can see just

about everywhere bags of American aid and the use of those bags

for hauling just about everything.

The second has been barter trade with China. Even today you

can see boxcars and flat cars full of scrap metal going to China. I

am afraid that most of North Korea’s forests have been cut down

and sold to China as well. While these measures have managed to

stem starvation, they have not brightened North Korea’s long-term

economic potential.

But I would say that the greatest cause is the informal economy.

North Koreans, despite obvious risks to their overall economic and

political system, have permitted the growth of informal markets,

barter, people selling what they grow in their private plots or what

they grow on the hillsides, and those informal coping mechanisms

have, in a sense, brought North Korea one or two steps back from

the brink.

Conspicuously absent from this, however, is what economists

would call real systemic reform of the economy. And that was very

odd to me because there has been clearly an allowance made for

micro-economic changes in the society, which are arguably politically far more risky. Why then have they not instituted meaningful

changes on the macro level? They have experimented with special

economic zones and things like that.

But to the best of my knowledge, the reason these changes have

not taken place is because the North Korean leaders do not believe

in a level playing field. For them, small countries are inherently at

a disadvantage compared to large countries and, therefore, need to

leverage their position or power or influence against large countries

in order to gain benefits. So when you talk about opening the economy to international trade and competing on a level playing field

in the international market, they simply do not believe it is possible or that kind of fair play exists at all.

So this becomes a problem for us as we move humanitarian aid

into North Korea. We are constantly having to deal with stop-gap

measures and the informal economy, and therefore, we pay way too

much for certain things and way too little for others. My concern

35

is that even our efforts have not helped. They have helped the TB

work, but they really have not helped grow North Korea’s economy

to a serious extent.

So while I do not argue that international or multilateral approaches to the nuclear issue and WMD are not necessary, I really

would like to see someone focus on making North Koreans—the

sanctions issue—making it possible for North Koreans to sell legitimate products that they might make to legitimate markets, and in

this way encouraging the kind of change on the macro level that

we have already seen on the micro level. Because I am afraid that

while coping mechanisms on the micro level may help people from

starving to death, ultimately the kinds of changes that we would

like to see in a whole plethora of issues will not take place until

people in power are genuinely convinced that if they make something in their society, put it in a container, send it to the United

States or wherever, that they can compete fairly and openly on the

international market and raise money in a legitimate, transparent

fashion.

I will end here and thank you again for making this possible. It

has been a lot of fun.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Linton follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEPHEN W. LINTON, PH.D., CHAIRMAN, EUGENE BELL

FOUNDATION

Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, I am pleased to appear before you

today to offer some of my insights on life in North Korea.

As an American, I believe that that I have been given a rare extended glimpse

into North Korea that most foreigners are not allowed to see. Before I share some

of my thoughts on this topic, allow me to give a brief explanation of these unique

circumstances.

BACKGROUND

I grew up in Korea, the son of a third generation Southern Presbyterian missionary. My family lived in the South Korean countryside during a period of great

economic hardship. At that time the infection rate for tuberculosis was about 5%

of the general population. While attending a local Korean grade school, I contracted

this disease. As a result, I spent nine months confined to my bedroom with my two

brothers in 1956.

While recuperating from my second bout with tuberculosis in 1979, I first visited

North Korea as an observer to an international table tennis meet. This visit encouraged me to focus my graduate research on North Korea. Upon completion of my degree at Columbia University, I taught Korean studies and worked as a consultant

for a variety of North Korea-related projects, including an effort by the Reverend

Billy Graham to develop relations with North Korea’s leader, Kim II Sung.

Eventually I had to make a choice between teaching and continuing North Korea

work. When the North Korean government officially asked for assistance in 1995,

I founded the Eugene Bell Foundation and began to coordinate shipments of donated food. In 1997, North Korea’s Ministry of Public Health formally asked me to

focus our organization’s work on tuberculosis. Vice Minister Choe Chang Sik’s

knowledge of my own experience as a tuberculosis patient, as well as the fact that

my parents had founded and directed a tuberculosis clinic and sanitarium in South

Korea for thirty years, no doubt encourage him to make this request.

In response to this official request, since 1997 the Eugene Bell Foundation has

focused on medical assistance to North Korea and now assists approximately 60 out

of 80 North Korean hospitals and tuberculosis treatment facilities. Over the years,

I have made close to 60 visits to North Korea and have traveled to every province

in the country to assess needs and to monitor humanitarian assistance. The Eugene

Bell Foundation has grown to be one of North Korea’s primary sources for outside

medical assistance, particularly for people who live in rural areas.

36

TRAGEDY FOLLOWED BY SLOW IMPROVEMENT

As many have documented in detail, North Koreans experienced a severe economic shock in the mid 1990’s, a drastic economic downturn they blame on a series

of natural disasters. By their own admission, North Korea’s citizens, used to relying

on dependable though modest government subsidies, were unprepared (and in all

too many cases, unable) to adjust to a new economic order where survival depended

on individual initiative. As a result, untold numbers starved to death. While traveling in the countryside in the spring of 1997 I witnessed hundreds of internally

displaced people who were wandering the city streets, highways, and railroad tracks

in a desperate search for food. Many of them drifted northward to the Chinese border as if following the shipments of corn and other foodstuffs that were trickling

over the border from the PRC. The plight of these people was indescribable, a tragedy that I will never be able to forget.

Today, the life of the ordinary North Korean continues to be difficult almost beyond description. For South Koreans who are old enough to remember the 40’s and

50’s, the harsh economic realities of North Korea today would look familiar. Especially since the steep economic downturn of the 1990’s, income from salaries and

wages has not been enough to guarantee survival. As a result, North Koreans have

had to turn to informal coping mechanisms. Even individuals who work in government ministries rely on outside sources of income to acquire the goods and services

they need for their families.

Thankfully, the North Korean economy has slowly improved over the past few

years. Although outsiders would have a hard time believing that what the average

person eats could be an improvement, when compared to 1996 and 1997, the lives

of its ordinary citizens has improved slightly. This is even in light of the fact that

North Koreans still struggle with severe shortages of electricity, fuel for heating,

and practically everything else.

The credit for a modest improvement in the standard of living in North Korea is

threefold. Indubitably, foreign food assistance, particularly from the U.S., deserves

a major share of tribute for saving and improving the life of the average North Korean. Despite evidence of diversion, the continual stream of aid from the outside has

helped immeasurably. Evidence of the volume of foreign food assistance is visible

not only in the fuller faces of the ordinary North Korean citizen but also in the ubiquitous food sacks stamped with slogans like ‘‘Donated by the USA’’ one can see all

over North Korea.

Foreign economic assistance and barter trade has also played a major—if

unmeasured role in the modest gains in the quality of life in North Korea. Of particular significance has been the agricultural assistance from the Republic of Korea

(South Korea) that has made it possible for the North Korean peasant to grow more

food. North Koreans have also shipped countless rail cars loaded with timber and

scrap metal to China where they have bartered it for food and other necessities.

Whole factories have been scrapped and shipped north, along with much of what

remained of North Korea’s forests. But although these measures may have stemmed

some starvation, they have scarcely brightened North Korea’s long-term economic

potential.

The primary credit for North Korea’s modest economic gains has been the informal economy. These so-called ‘‘informal coping mechanisms,’’ including produce from

private plots, farmer’s markets, etc., adopted by North Korea’s tough and resilient

population, have halted North Korea’s precipitous economic slide toward oblivion.

Although the economic situation is still precarious, improvement in the over-all food

supply has meant that some officials are beginning to refer to the ‘‘Arduous March’’

(North Korea’s official euphemism for the famine) in the past tense.

BARRIERS TO ECONOMIC REFORM

Conspicuously missing from this picture of a slow improvement in quality of life

is the structural reform needed to promote legitimate international trade. The absence of significant economic reform, moreover, threatens the modest gains made

through aid and the informal economy, efforts that have only managed to pull North

Korea’s population back a few steps from disaster.

North Korea’s attitude toward economic reforms is one of the most controversial

topics among students of North Korea today. While some would argue that attempts

to set up special economic zones and adjustments in currency represent a genuine

willingness to embrace economic reform, these policies aimed at promoting economic

growth have yet to make a meaningful impact on everyday life.

This fact is driven home time and time again in our humanitarian work in North

Korea. Not only do we struggle with chronic shortages of electricity, bad roads and

poor communications, but one particular problem arises time and time again to

37

challenge our efforts to deliver goods and services to North Koreans suffering from

tuberculosis and other life-threatening diseases. This is none other than the inability of North Korea to move beyond an ‘‘informal economy’’ on the macro level. As

a result, we pay too much for some things (like transportation) and not enough for

others (like manpower). And what’s worse, like other humanitarian aid efforts, our

assistance does not contribute to North Korea’s capacity to engage in legitimate economic activity.

During the 1960’s and early 70’s, North Korea enjoyed a period of economic

growth and stability that old timers in the North still wistfully look back to. During

that time, the average citizen lived without fear of famine or worry about how to

acquire the necessities of life. The short decade made such a strong impression on

the people living at the time, that many who remember it are reluctant to abandon

the economic system that delivered North Korea’s ‘‘Golden Age.’’ The chief characteristic of North Korea’s Golden Age was a public distribution system that provided citizens with a food and clothing ration, housing, education, and medical care

free of charge. Although this state-supported standard of living would hardly satisfy

South Koreans today, it meant that money was not needed for survival. As the

state’s public subsidy system faltered, North Korea’s population has had to ‘‘retreat’’

toward a money-based economy where prices are determined by market principles

rather than official fiat. This retreat turned into a rout in 1995.

Since the Arduous March, the informal economy has provided the bulk of goods

and services to the average citizen. As more goods have become available, what

began as a barter economy has become increasingly monetized, and prices have become a little more stable. Nevertheless, this economic reform on the micro level has

yet to be embraced by the major institutions in North Korean society. As a result,

while the private sector has made significant steps toward evolution toward a market economy, North Korea’s official sector still lacks the mentality or mechanisms

needed to normalize the exchange of goods and services or to permit competitive

pricing, changes essential if North Korea is to profit from international trade. Instead, government ministries and agencies continue to rely on a plethora of informal

mechanisms to profit from moneymaking ventures under their control. And while

these methods are often ingenious, they do not grow the economy as they should.

One creative example of the workings of North Korea’s informal economy at the

international level is Hyundai’s Diamond Mountain project. Instead of sharing risk

with South Korean investors and accepting an agreed portion of the profits, related

North Korean ministries collect ‘‘rent’’ for the use of this scenic area, regardless of

whether the overall effort turns a profit or not. The result has been a massive ROK

government funded subsidy to North Korea disguised as a tourist industry. As a result, North Korea’s own tourist industry has learned very little from this venture

about how to profit from international tourism.

What has made North Korea’s officials so reluctant to promote the economic

changes needed for competitive international trade? It goes without saying that

North Korea’s leadership is fearful of what might happen if its ordinary citizens are

permitted to make the contacts with the outside needed to produce and ship legitimate merchandise. Clearly this concern is behind the attempts to set up ‘‘special

economic zones’’ that can be quarantined from the general population. This kind of

thinking is also behind the restrictions placed on humanitarian aid monitoring

today. Thanks to humanitarian aid programs, North Koreans are far more relaxed

in their dealings with foreigners today than they were only several years ago. Clearly, fear of people-to-people contacts is not the primary reason North Korea has not

wholeheartedly embraced economic reforms.

FAIR PLAY AND SANCTIONS

Faith in fairness is essential to justify the risks of opening a closed economy to

international trade, and North Korea’s leadership has never believed in a world governed by fair play. Instead, they believe that nature as well as history has created

a world of national ‘‘haves’’ and ‘‘have nots.’’ In this view, because the world’s natural resources are unequally distributed in favor of larger nations, smaller nations

have to rely on diplomacy and influence (pressure) to acquire what they need. Not

surprisingly, all their energies are exerted in acquiring the leverage needed to force

foreign powers to take them seriously.

The primary ‘‘products’’ North Korea has to ‘‘sell’’ according to this perspective,

are not the material goods that its people might produce, but instead the intangible

‘‘benefits’’ outsiders could gain through engagement itself. This was the reasoning

behind North Korea’s support for the Light Water Reactor Project. If it ultimately

succeeded, North Korea hoped to gain not only electricity, but more importantly a

much desired relationship with the United States. Whether or not the venture

38

would ever provide competitive electrical power had never entered into the equation

at all.

Sadly, North Korea’s perspective and suspicions regarding international affairs

seem to be confirmed by the strong support for U.S.-led sanctions. In the North Korean way of thinking, sanctions ‘‘prove’’ that the economic playing field will never

be level enough to permit their products to compete in the international arena.

When seen from this perspective, North Korea’s international and domestic policies

are relatively easy to understand.

I do not mean to suggest, of course, that removing sanctions would result in an

immediate embrace of economic reforms, much less in total transparency in North

Korea’s WMD programs. Still, it is unrealistic to expect implementation of significant structural reforms until North Korea’s leaders are convinced that their products will be allowed to compete in international markets. Until that day, North Koreans will continue to blame others for their hardships rather than wholeheartedly

embracing reform.

Not surprisingly, North Korea’s ambivalence toward economic reform impacts the

ordinary citizen most. While the informal economy may help stave off starvation,

it can never provide the structure or legal protections needed to promote private sector business and industry; much less develop the partnerships with outsiders essential to promote trade. Until the day comes when its leaders are willing to risk real

economic reforms, North Korean citizens will have to rely on the informal economy

to get by from day to day. Clearly this is no way to build a prosperous future, but

it may be the only way they can survive.

[Press Release—Thursday, May 29, 2003]

EUGENE BELL FOUNDATION DELEGATION RETURNS FROM 4-WEEK

NORTH KOREA AID DELIVERY VISIT

Washington, DC—The Eugene Bell Foundation (EBF), a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that has provided medical aid to North Korea since 1995, recently completed a North Korea trip to the South Pyongan region.

‘‘Despite ongoing tensions between the United States and North Korea, Eugene

Bell projects have been warmly received and continue to make positive progress.

This is proof that humanitarian aid can remain on a separate track from political

considerations and may even work to reduce such instability,’’ said Dr. Stephen W.

Linton, EBF Chairman and Founder.

From April 19th to May 15th, the current trip included visits to 20 medical facilities and a children’s hospital that the Foundation supports through its Partner

Package Program, a system that strives to link donors with specific medical care

institutions in North Korea. Medical aid is donated directly on-site to recipients in

the names of their beneficiaries.

The team headed by Dr. Linton arrived to the country just before the border was

officially closed by North Korean authorities due to SARS concerns. Once the group

was determined to be ‘‘SARS-free,’’ the Eugene Bell delegation was not hindered in

traveling around the country. A majority of the facilities the Bell Foundation assists

are located in the countryside.

‘‘Over the past ten years, our humanitarian efforts have increasingly been met

with more cooperation and enthusiasm. In accordance with rising levels of trust, the

transparency of our programs has also drastically increased. Many people don’t realize that this sort of transparency is even possible in North Korea, particularly by

an American organization. While we have also had our share of disappointments,

the key was sustained interest and continued engagement,’’ stated Dr. Stephen

Linton.

The Eugene Bell Foundation primarily focuses on the treatment and prevention

of tuberculosis, North Korea’s most serious public health concern. Since 1995, EBF

currently supports 60 out of North Korea’s 80 tuberculosis care facilities. Bell Foundation delegations regularly make site visits to institutions that aid is distributed

to.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you, Dr. Linton. Thank you for your

service in helping North Korean people.

Dr. Noland.

39

STATEMENT OF DR. MARCUS NOLAND, SENIOR FELLOW, INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS, WASHINGTON,

DC

Dr. NOLAND. Thank you, Senator Brownback. I am honored to be

invited to address the subcommittee, and in my oral remarks I will

summarize and extend my written testimony that has been submitted.

North Korea has been in economic decline for more than a decade. In the 1990s a famine killed perhaps 600,000 to a million people, which is to say I believe that the figure cited earlier by Mr.

Natsios of 2.5 million is probably an exaggeration. In the end, it

probably does not really matter whether it is 3 percent of the population or 5 percent or 10 percent. It was a bad experience. And

paradoxically, while I think that Mr. Natsios was probably unduly

negative in his description of the past, I think his description of the

present was probably a bit optimistic.

Given the expenditure patterns of the regime—that is to say, its

extreme preference for guns over butter—the economy does not

produce enough output to sustain the population biologically, and

the remaining population is increasingly aid-dependent and today

is on the precipice of another famine.

Economic policy changes were undertaken in July 2002, and I

would agree with Steve Linton, that I do not believe that these

were really real reforms. I think they were attempts to revive a

moribund system and had four components. One was micro-economic reforms or an attempt to marketize the economy to a certain

extent. Second was macro-economic policy changes which had the

effect of generating huge inflation. Third was the pursuit of special

economic zones, and fourth was seeking aid or passing the hat.

Subsequent moves undertaken since July of last year have included a decree that all dollars in circulation have to be turned in

for euros, which the central bank actually does not have, and the

announcement in March of this year of what is called a bond initiative but, in fact, it is more like a lottery ticket initiative.

To understand the food availability situation, the unleashing of

inflation is key. What the North Koreans did last year was raise

the prices of grain by over 40,000 percent in terms of both procurement prices at the farm gate, in terms of the retail distribution

price in the public distribution system. The problem is they had no

mechanism for bringing these state prices in line with market

prices, and because of the huge inflation that has occurred, market

prices have continued to rise. And as a consequence, farmers continue to divert supply not into the PDS but rather into the market

or they use the grain to produce liquor which they sell. So the reforms have not had the effect of bringing more food into the staterun system as anticipated. That is on the supply side.

On the demand side, what has happened is that there has been

increasing social differentiation within North Korea, and with people increasingly reliant on the market to access food, most urban

households are food-insecure.

In Mr. Natsios’ written testimony, he referred to a nutrition

study paid for by the World Food Program, UNICEF, and the EU,

and argued that this had shown a big improvement in nutritional

40

1The views expressed in this statement are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect

the views of individual members of the Institute’s Board of Directors or Advisory Committee.

status of North Korea since 1998. I believe that this study is simply not credible. Let me quickly explain why.

The first study these organizations did in 1998 found that 62

percent of North Korean children were stunted, that is, height for

age; 62 percent were underweight, that is to say, weight for age;

and 16 percent were wasted, that is a measure of weight based on

height. The latter would make the situation in North Korea in

1998 50 percent worse than the contemporaneous situation in Sierra Leone which, as you know, had collapsed into virtual anarchy.

The 2002 study that Mr. Natsios referred to showed an incredible

improvement of underweight infants, from 62 percent to 21 percent; and the stunted ones, from 62 percent to 42 percent. Low

birth weights were 6.7 percent, which is actually better than the

United States level of 7.6 percent.

How do we explain this stunning improvement in 4 years?

Well, it could be just miraculous. That is possible.

It could be the fact that the North Koreans do not allow foreign

aid agencies to use Korean speakers, and traditionally Koreans

date age from conception not from birth. You are essentially 1 year

old when you are born. My supposition is in 1998 they sent people

into the countryside who systematically misinterpreted people’s responses about the age of these children. They systematically overestimated their ages. That is why you get these incredible numbers

of stunting and so on, and that is why the age-related measures

improved so dramatically in 4 years. It is not that the situation actually improved. It is just a statistical artifact.

In any event, none of these studies covered two of the provinces

of North Korea, so they not have a representative sample.

So to recap, basically the economic program is failing and I

would argue the country is on the verge of lurching back into famine. It did not have to be this way. Morocco is a country which is

about the same size, and in certain respects, economically similar

to North Korea. It also experienced a big fall in domestic output

of grain in the late 1990s, but Morocco did not experience a famine.

The reason is they exported, earning foreign exchange, and they

borrowed money on international markets, purchasing grain on a

commercial basis from countries like the United States, Argentina,

and Australia which are more capable of producing it efficiently.

Ultimately the only sustainable solution to the food situation in

North Korea is an opening up of the North Korean economy, the

exportation of industrial products and the purchase of bulk grains

on the international markets. Domestic production and aid are not

sustainable solutions to this problem.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Noland follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARCUS NOLAND 1, SENIOR FELLOW, INSTITUTE FOR

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or North Korea has been experiencing an on-going food crisis for more than a decade. A famine in the late 1990s

resulted in the deaths of perhaps 600,000 to 1 million people out of a pre-famine

population of roughly 21 million. Since then, a combination of humanitarian food

aid and development assistance has ameliorated the situation somewhat, but acVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:26 Oct 29, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 89499 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
41

cording to the World Food Programme (WFP) and other observers, the country is

once again on the precipice of another famine.

Given the expenditure preferences of the regime, the North Korean economy does

not produce enough output to sustain the population biologically, and population

maintenance is increasingly aid-dependent. Yet the October 2002 revelation of a nuclear weapons program based on highly enriched uranium (in addition to a plutonium-based program acknowledged a decade earlier), undertaken in contravention

of several international agreements, and North Korea’s subsequent withdrawal from

the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty have put continued international assistance in

doubt.

The situation is further complicated by internal economic policy changes initiated

in mid-2002. In this regard, this testimony will make three basic points:

• Food availability is precarious, and it would not be surprising to observe increases in mortality.

• Industrial revitalization is the only sustainable solution to the food crisis.

• North Korea is likely to continue a policy of muddling through, implying a continuation of the food emergency.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

In July 2002, the government of North Korea announced changes in economic policy that could be regarded as having four components: marketization, inflation, special economic zones, and aid-seeking.

Marketization

With respect to food, the government has implemented a policy of increasing the

procurement prices of grains (to increase the volume of food entering the public distribution system [PDS]) along with dramatically increasing PDS prices to consumers, with the retail prices of grains rising from 40,000 to 60,000 percent in the

span of six months during the first half of 2002. On the supply side, the increase

in agricultural procurement prices was presumably undertaken to increase the actual amount of food entering the PDS. Yet North Korean agriculture is highly inputintensive (i.e., it makes extensive use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides, electrically powered irrigation etc.), and the ultimate impact of the reforms on agricultural yields could be strongly influenced by what happens in the industrial sector.

Moreover, while PDS prices have remained largely unchanged since 1 July, 2002,

market prices have increased significantly, and it is unclear if the policy is having

its intended effect or if farmers are diverting output to the market.

On the demand side, the government appears to be trying to ensure survival rations through the PDS—the rationing system through which most people historically

obtained food—with food purchased in the market supplementing the PDS rations

for those who can afford it. Some have questioned the extent to which this is a real

policy change and how much this is simply a ratification of system-fraying that had

already occurred—there is considerable evidence that most food, for example, was

already being distributed through markets, not the PDS. But this may indeed be

precisely the motivation behind the increases in producer prices—with little supply

entering the PDS, people increasingly obtained their food from non-state sources,

and by bringing more supply into state-controlled channels, the government can try

to reduce the extent to which food is allocated purely on the basis of purchasing

power. Indeed, given the growing inequality in the distribution of income and

wealth within North Korea, which could be expected to accentuate differences in access to food and the already highly stressed nature of the North Korean society, it

would not be surprising to observe increases in mortality rates. The state may also

be motivated by broader anti-market ideological considerations as discussed below.

Yet another motivation may be to reduce the fiscal strain imposed by the implicit

subsidy provided to urban consumers.

In the industrial sector, the policy changes could be interpreted as an attempt to

implement a Chinese-style dual-price strategy. In essence, the Chinese instructed

their state-owned enterprises to continue to fulfill the plan, but once planned production obligations were fulfilled, the enterprises were free to hire factors and

produce products for sale on the open market. In other words, the plan was essentially frozen in time, and marginal growth occurred according to market dictates.

Enterprises have been instructed that they are responsible for covering their own

costs—that is, no more state subsidies. Yet it is unclear to what extent managers

have been given the power to hire, fire, and promote workers, or to what extent remuneration will be determined by the market. Moreover, there has been no mention

of the military’s privileged position within the economy, and domestic propaganda

continues to emphasize a ‘‘military-first’’ political path.

42

The state has administratively raised wage levels, with certain favored groups

such as military personnel, party officials, scientists, and coal miners receiving

supernormal increases. (For example, it has been reported that the wage increases

for military personnel and miners have been on the order of 1,500 percent, that for

agricultural workers may be on the order of 900 percent, but the increases for office

workers and less essential employees are less.) This alteration of real wages across

occupational groups could be interpreted as an attempt to enhance the role of material incentives in labor allocation.

The state continues to maintain an administered price structure, though by fiat,

the state prices are being brought in line with prices observed in the markets. This

is problematic (as it has proven in other transitional economies): the state has told

the enterprises that they must cover costs, yet it continues to administer prices, and

in the absence of any formal bankruptcy or other ‘‘exit’’ mechanism, there is no prescribed method for enterprises that cannot cover costs to cease operations, nor, in

the absence of a social safety net, how workers from closed enterprises would survive. What is likely to occur is the maintenance of operations by these enterprises

supported by implicit subsidies, either through national or local government budgets

or through recourse to a reconstructed banking system. Indeed, the North Koreans

have sent officials to China to study the Chinese banking system, which although

may well have virtues, is also the primary mechanism through which money-losing

state-owned firms are kept alive.

The consensus among most outside observers is that, at this writing,

marketization has not delivered as hoped. The behavior of enterprise managers appears to be similar to that observed prior to the policy changes. The jury is still out

on the impact on the agricultural system, since the impact of changed incentives

would not be readily apparent until the 2003 spring planting decisions.

Inflation

At the same time the government announced the marketization initiatives, it also

announced tremendous administered increases in wages and prices. To get a grasp

on the magnitude of these price changes, consider this: when China raised the price

of grains at the start of its reforms in November 1979, the increase was on the order

of 25 percent. In comparison, North Korea has raised the prices of corn and rice by

more than 40,000 percent. In the absence of huge supply responses, the result will

be an enormous jump in the price level and possibly even hyperinflation. Access to

foreign currency may act as insurance against inflation, and in fact, the black market value of the North Korean won has dropped steadily since the reforms were announced. At the same time, the government apparently continues to insist that foreign-invested enterprises pay wages in hard currencies (at wage rates that exceed

those of China and Vietnam). This curious policy has the effect of blunting the competitiveness-boosting impact of the devaluation by aborting the adjustment of relative costs.

Moreover, when China began its reforms in 1979, more than 70 percent of the

population was in the agricultural sector. (The same held true for Vietnam when

it began reforming the following decade.) In contrast, North Korea has perhaps half

that share employed in agriculture. This has two profound implications: first, the

population share, which is directly benefiting from the increase in producer prices

for agricultural goods, is roughly half as big as in China and Vietnam. This means

that reform in North Korea is more likely to create losers and with them the possibility of unrest. Second, the relatively smaller size of the agricultural sector suggests that the positive supply response will not be as great in the North Korean case

as compared to China or Vietnam either. Again, this increases the likelihood of reform, creating losers and unrest.

Those with access to foreign exchange, such as senior party officials, will be relatively insulated from this phenomenon. Agricultural workers may benefit from

‘‘automatic’’ pay increases as the price of grain rises, but salaried workers without

access to foreign exchange will fall behind. In other words, the process of

marketization and inflation will contribute to the exacerbation of existing social differences in North Korea. The implications for ‘‘losers’’ could be quite severe. According to a WFP survey, most urban households are food insecure, spending more than

80 percent of their incomes on food.

Make no mistake about it: North Korea has moved from the realm of elite to the

realm of mass politics. Unlike the diplomatic initiatives of the past several years,

these developments will affect the entire population, not just a few elites. And while

there is a consensus that marketization is a necessary component of economic revitalization, the inflationary part of the package would appear to be both unnecessary

and destructive. (If one wanted to increase the relative wages of coal miners by 40

percent, one could simply give them a 40 percent raise—one does not need to inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:26 Oct 29, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 89499 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
43

crease the overall price level by a factor of 10, and the nominal wages of coal miners

by a factor of 14 to effect the same real wage increase.)

So why do it? There are several possible explanations, but in the interests of brevity I will focus on one: namely that the inflation policy is intentional and is a product of Kim Jong-il’s reputed antipathy toward private economic activity beyond state

control. One effect of inflation is to reduce the value of existing won holdings. (For

example, if the price level increases by a factor of 10, the real value of existing won

holdings is literally decimated.) Historically, state-administered inflations and their

cousins, currency reforms, have been used by socialist governments to wipe out currency ‘‘overhangs’’ (excess monetary stock claims on goods in circulation), more specifically to target black marketers and others engaged in economic activity outside

state strictures, who hold large stocks of the domestic currency. (In a currency reform, residents are literally required to turn in their existing holdings—subject to

a ceiling, of course—for newly issued notes.) In July it was announced that the blue

(‘‘foreigner’s’’) won foreign exchange certificates would be replaced by the normal

brown (‘‘people’s’’) won, though it is unclear if these are convertible into foreign currency. The other shoe dropped in December 2002 when the authorities announced

that the circulation of US dollars was prohibited and that all residents, foreign and

domestic alike, would have to turn in their dollars to be exchanged for euros which

the central bank did not have. In the case of North Korea, the episode that is now

unfolding will be the fourth such one in the country’s five-decade history.

In yet another wheeze to extract resources from the population, in March 2003

the government announced the issuance of ‘‘People’s Life Bonds,’’ which despite

their name would seem to more closely resemble lottery tickets than bonds as conventionally understood. These instruments have a 10-year maturity, with principal

repaid in annual installments beginning in year five (there does not appear to be

any provision for interest payments and no money for such payments has been

budgeted). For the first two years of the program, there would be semi-annual drawings (annually thereafter) with winners to receive their principal plus prizes. No information has been provided on the expected odds or prize values other than that

the drawings are to be based on an ‘‘open and objective’’ principle. The government’s

announcement states, without irony, that ‘‘the bonds are backed by the full faith

and credit of the DPRK government.’’ Committees have been established in every

province, city, county, institute, factory, village, and town to promote the scheme—

citizens purchasing these ‘‘bonds’’ will be performing a ‘‘patriotic deed.’’ Both the

characteristics of the instrument and the mass campaign to sell it suggest that politics, not personal finance, will be its main attraction.

The hypothesis has the strength of linking what appears to be a gratuitous economic policy to politics—Kim Jong-il not only rewards favored constituencies by providing them with real income increases and by going the inflation/currency reform

route but he also punishes his enemies. This line of reasoning is not purely speculative: it has been reported that one of the motivations behind unifying prices in the

PDS and farmers’ markets has been to reduce the need of consumers to visit farmers’ markets and to ‘‘assist in the prevention of illegal sales activities’’ that took

place when the price in the farmers’ market was much higher than the state price.

A number of unconfirmed reports indicate that the government has placed a price

ceiling on staple goods in the farmers’ markets as an anti-inflationary device. The

increase in the procurement price for grain has reportedly been motivated, at least

in part, to counter the supply response of the farmers, who were diverting acreage

away from grain to tobacco and using grain to produce liquor for sale.

The problem with this explanation is that having gone through this experience

several times in the past, North Korean traders are not gullible: they quickly get

out of won in favor of dollars, yen, and yuan, and the black market value of the

won has declined steadily since the policy changes were announced. (Indeed, even

North Koreans working on cooperative farms reportedly prefer trinkets as a store

of value to the local currency.) As a consequence, these blows, aimed at traders, may

fall more squarely on the North Korean masses, especially those in regions and occupations in which opportunities to obtain foreign currencies are limited.

Special Economic Zones

The third component of the North Korean economic policy change is the formation

of various sorts of special economic zones. The first such zone was established in

the Rajin-Sonbong region in the extreme northeast of the country in 1991. It has

proved to be a failure for a variety of reasons including its geographic isolation, poor

infrastructure, onerous rules, and interference in enterprise management by party

officials. The one major investment has been the establishment of a combination

hotel/casino/bank. Given the obvious scope for illicit activity associated with such a

44

1For substantiation, see the simulations reported by Marcus Noland, Sherman Robinson, and

Tao Wang, ‘‘Famine in North Korea: Causes and Cures,’’ Economic Development and Cultural

Change 49, no. 4 (2001).

horizontally integrated endeavor, the result has been less Hong Kong than Macau

North.

In September 2002 the North Korean government announced the establishment

of a special administrative region (SAR) at Sinuiju. In certain respects the location

of the new zone was not surprising: the North Koreans had been talking about

doing something in the Sinuiju area since 1998. Yet in other respects the announcement was extraordinary. The North Koreans announced that the zone would exist

completely outside North Korea’s usual legal structures; that it would have its own

flag and issue its own passports; and that land could be leased for fifty years. To

top it off, the SAR would not be run by a North Korean but by a Chinese-born entrepreneur with Dutch citizenship, named Yang Bin, who was promptly arrested by

Chinese authorities on tax evasion charges.

Ultimately, the planned industrial park at Kaesong, oriented toward South Korea,

may have a bigger impact on the economy than either the Rajin-Sonbong or Sinuiju

zones.

Aid-seeking

The fourth component of the economic plan consisted of passing the hat. In September 2002, during the first-ever meeting between the heads of government of

Japan and North Korea, Chairman Kim managed to extract from Prime Minister

Koizumi a commitment to provide a large financial transfer to North Korea as part

of the diplomatic normalization process to settle post-colonial claims, despite the

shaky state of Japanese public finances. However, Kim’s bald admission that North

Korean agents had indeed kidnapped 12 Japanese citizens and that most of the

abductees were dead set off a political firestorm in Japan. This revelation, together

with the April 2003 admission that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons in contravention to multiple international agreements, has effectively killed the diplomatic

rapprochement and with it the prospects of a large capital infusion from Japan, as

well as already dim prospects of admission to international financial institutions

such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

CONCLUSIONS

North Korea is into its second decade of food crisis. It experienced a famine in

the 1990s that killed perhaps 3 to 5 percent of the pre-famine population. Yet remarkably little has changed since then; grain production has not recovered; and inexpertly enacted policy changes, a deteriorating diplomatic environment, donor fatigue, and an utterly ruthless government have brought the country once again to

the precipice of famine.

It did not have to be this way. Morocco, for example, a country of similar size and

in certain respects with similar economic characteristics as the DPRK, suffered a

similar fall in domestic output in the late 1990s, but a combination of increased exports and increased foreign borrowing allowed it to cover its food deficit through imports. Times were hard, but Morocco did not experience famine.

Unlike other communist countries that have experienced famine, the case of

North Korea represents less the introduction of misguided policies than the cumulative effect of two generations of economic mismanagement and social engineering.

As a consequence, the policies are so imbedded in the social and political fabric of

the country that they may well prove more difficult to reverse than has been the

case elsewhere. The country could improve food availability by freeing up resources

currently devoted to the military, but as long as the country pursues ‘‘military-first’’

politics, this is unlikely.

Aid is not a viable long-term solution to the North Korean food crisis—the food

gap is too large, and the political sustainability of aid too precarious. And while incentive reforms could contribute to productivity increases in agriculture, given the

economic fundamentals of the DPRK—a high ratio of population to arable land, relatively high northerly latitude, and short growing season—it is doubtful whether a

food security strategy based on domestic agricultural revitalization is advisable either. Only trade-opening strategies in the industrial sector and systemic reforms are

likely to meet human needs and obviate the need for concessional assistance.1 The

ultimate resolution to North Korea’s food problem requires the revitalization of its

industrial economy. To achieve food security, North Korea should open up externally; export manufactures, mining products, and some niche agricultural, forest,

45

2See Anders Aslund, Peter Boone, and Simon Johnson. ‘‘How To Stabilize: Lessons from PostCommunist Countries,’’ Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1: 217-313 (1996). 3See Marcus Noland, Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas, Washington,

Institute for International Economics, (2000). 4See Marcus Noland, Sherman Robinson, and Tao Wang, ‘‘Rigorous Speculation: The Collapse

and Revival of the North Korean Economy,’’ World Development 28, no. 10 (2000) pp. 1767-88.

and fisheries products; and import bulk grains—like its neighbors South Korea,

China, and Japan do.

Such a prospective development, in turn, is hampered by both domestic and external impediments. It is not at all clear that the current leadership is willing to countenance the erosion of state control that would accompany the degree of

marketization necessary to revitalize the economy. The opposite would seem more

plausible, namely, that Kim Jong-il has reluctantly concluded that the old methods

are inadequate to revive the economy and out of political necessity is embracing

marketization, inflation, and the former colonial master in a desperate bid to revitalize—though not fundamentally change—a moribund system. If this interpretation

is correct, then we should expect hesitancy in the implementation of reforms and

a strong reliance on the international social safety net supplied by the rest of the

world. In this respect the outcome of the diplomatic maneuvering over the North

Korean nuclear weapons program is of critical importance.

Even if a serious reform program were attempted, it is by no means preordained

that such a program would be successful. The three robust predictors of success in

reforming centrally planned economies are the degree of macroeconomic stability at

the time that reform is initiated; the legacy of a functional pre-socialist commercial

legal system; and the size of the agricultural sector.2 North Korea is already experiencing significant macroeconomic instability and in terms of the sectoral composition of output and employment, the North Korean economy more closely resembles

Romania and parts of the former Soviet Union than it does the agriculture-led Asian

reformers, China and Vietnam.3 Finally, the divided nature of the Korean peninsula

and dynastic aspects of the North Korean regime present real ideological and political problems for would-be reformers in the North, namely how to re-interpret the

juche ideology of the virtually deified founding leader Kim Il-sung as market-oriented globalization (especially when most of the increased economic interdependence

would be with rival South Korea and former colonial master Japan), and indeed,

how to preserve the whole raison d’etre of the regime as it begins to look increasingly like a third-rate South Korea.

Even if the North were able to successfully navigate these shoals domestically, it

is hard to see the initiative coming to fruition as long as the country remains, in

essence, a pariah state, brandishing its nuclear weapons and missiles, subject to

continual diplomatic sanctions by the United States, Japan, and other powers. Capital is a coward and foreigners will not invest in such an environment. There will

be no permanent solution to the North Korean food crisis until there is a resolution

of its profound diplomatic problems, and indeed, the diplomatic disputes have already substantially impeded the humanitarian aid program and its ameliorative impact. If a reduction of external tensions could be achieved, however, it would not

only pave the way for expanded commerce but also could potentially yield a sizable

peace dividend that would facilitate increased food imports.

Even this would not be easy, however. North Korea is not a member of the International Monetary Fund or any of the multilateral development banks, and, to date,

contact with these organizations has been minimal, limited to a couple of informational missions of brief duration. As multiple observers have emphasized, the

DPRK’s institutional capacity for managing development projects is woeful. In all

likelihood, a prolonged period of technical assistance and capacity-building would be

needed before substantial lending could occur. Once lending was underway, the initial focus would have to be on rehabilitating North Korea’s badly deteriorated infrastructure as a necessary precursor to expanded private investment, for example by

improving transportation links between mining areas and ports. The upside, of

course, is that the degree of isolation and distortion embodied in the North Korean

economy is so profound that with policy reform, investment and technology transfer,

and expanded ties to the outside world (or even its immediate neighbors), the potential efficiency gains are enormous.4

And what if the diplomatic tumblers do not fall into place? The leadership of the

DPRK regards ‘‘survival’’ as the first in a lexicographic set of preferences, and the

regime has a history of confounding predictions of its demise. Moreover, for the last

decade it has been enabled by neighbors who, for their own reasons, prefer its continued existence to its disappearance. The amount of external assistance necessary

46

5See Anthony Michell, ‘‘The Current North Korean Economy,’’ in Marcus Noland ed. Economic

Integration on the Korean Peninsula, Washington: Institute for International Economics (1998).

to keep it on ‘‘survival rations’’ is not large.5 Considerable research suggests that

in the absence of a firm ideological commitment to reform, the provision of aid impedes policy change by enabling governments to avoid difficult and painful policy

choices. There is little evidence that North Korea is seriously committed to reform—

as opposed to regime maintenance—and as a consequence, it is reasonable to suppose that the availability of outside assistance will encourage the perpetuation of

a strategy of muddling through. The problem is that such a strategy in all likelihood

implies the continuation of the food crisis.

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you, Dr. Noland. Thank you for putting that so succinctly, all of the testimony have put so succinctly.

Dr. Noland, I just want to start briefly with you, if I could. As

I mentioned, I do not have a long time before this vote, so concise

answers would sure be appreciated.

You suppositioned—and I really take Dr. Linton as well—that

North Korea, to have any sort of stable situation for the people, has

to engage the international community in a normalized situation is

what, I take it, you would conclude with. First, is that accurate?

And I guess I would just challenge, it does not look like to me

that anything is likely to happen very soon with the wrestling

match that is going on about weapons, drug-running, refugees,

gulags. And you have got a pretty tough system here that has got

a lot to change before it is going to engage the international system.

Dr. NOLAND. North Korea has a very high ratio of people to arable land. It is at a fairly high northerly latitude, has short growing

seasons. It makes no sense for North Korea to try to achieve food

security through self-sufficiency.

Aid is precarious for the reasons you just mentioned—it is dependent on the diplomatic situation and that looks very bad.

I do not believe the regime is interested in economic reform as

we would understand it. It is simply trying to preserve itself. As

a consequence, I think the most likely outcome is a continuing

muddling through, which unfortunately implies a continuation of

the food crisis.

Dr. LINTON. Could I add something to that? Again, I would like

to get back to the point. I agree with Marcus that these folks have

to create products and sell them on the international market in

order to get ahead. In fact, that would be the best way to wean

them off of some of the less legal ways that they have of generating

hard currency. There is no question about that.

But again, they really do not think that option is being given

them, and I think absent some kind of limited opening on the sanctions issue that might allow them to manufacture and sell items

related to life, shoes, clothing, whatnot, without that, they will

probably continue to rely on mechanisms that we would not approve of to gain hard currency. Those are the options that they

have to live with.

Again, this mentality in their elite that the world is not a fair

place and everybody has to use leverage and pressure in order to

get what they want is in a sense a counter-market mentality that

really needs to be challenged. So I would say that especially the

United States with its resources that it has already put in there,

47

if these resources could go in a way that encourages them to do

real economic trade, that we might as a secondary balance begin

to see some improvement in some of these other areas. But if we

front-load it with requirements for concessions on this, that, and

the other, we may just have a society that just bogs down, as

Marcus has said, and muddles along and prolongs the misery for

everyone.

Senator BROWNBACK. Just as you say that, though, this regime

can choose to walk away from nuclear weapons development, or it

could choose to walk away from a gulag system. This is one of the

great repressive regimes that is left in the world. I think history

shows that the path they have chosen has been horrific for their

own people. They have the choice to do that as a regime.

Dr. LINTON. I think they clearly have the choice, and I would divide the gulag issue from the nuclear weapons issue. I do think

though—and I am not trying to justify them in the process, but

their own paranoia about survival is going to make it very difficult

to walk away from some kind of suspicion that they may have some

weapon. I think you can again cut down on the proliferation, and

I think as an economy in East Asia, certainly as we have found in

China, as an economy opens up and engages with the real world,

a lot of the other problems, indirectly human rights problems as

well, begin to go away.

I do not think, though, that unless they engage or are given the

opportunity to engage, that these problems are going to go away at

the rate that we would like. Everybody knows where they want to

go. It is a question of how you want to get there. North Korea has

been vilified and condemned more than any nation that I know of

in recent history, and it has not really helped much.

Senator BROWNBACK. And it has probably deserved it more——

Dr. LINTON. And it may deserve it, but it just has not worked.

That is my point.

Senator BROWNBACK. Ms. Fenton, if I could, for you. The issue

of what the Chinese are doing is clearly harmful to the North Koreans. In my experience of traveling to China and meeting with the

Chinese leaders about this, going to the Chinese/North Korean border, they are not helping with this situation, the repatriation. What

is it that we can do to really impress upon the Chinese that they

are, in many respects, causing much of this huge level of suffering

by thousands, if not millions, of North Koreans?

Ms. LIANG-FENTON. I think they are aware of that problem, but

I think their imperative is to thwart a potential flood of refugees

into the country. They do not want the economic or social burden

of caring for an untold number of North Koreans if the border region becomes more relaxed. This was one of the reasons why they

increased their crackdowns after the March rushing of the Spanish

Embassy, the 25 North Korean defectors, the first very public display of that kind of escaping from North Korea. I think that is one

of their main concerns. They do not want to open themselves up

to having to look after an untold number of refugees.

Senator BROWNBACK. Are there other things you would suggest

we do? You mentioned several in here about really getting the

UNHCR to stand its ground of what it is entitled to do, to have

the agreements that China has signed onto come into force on the

48

refoulment that they are doing with North Korean refugees. Are

there other ways that we can press on China to stand by the obligations that they have entered into?

Ms. LIANG-FENTON. Well, when they were placing their bid for

the 2008 Olympics, this might have been an area where governments could use leverage. We understand you are mistreating

North Korean refugees. We understand you want to host the 2008

Olympics. Is there a way that we can improve your chances, I

guess, tacitly speaking, if you improve your treatment toward these

people?

Senator BROWNBACK. So maybe watch for another point that may

come along.

Ms. LIANG-FENTON. Another point of entry, yes, with China to

latch onto a hook that—if we can use something that they want to

help secure some protections for the refugees, that might be effective.

It will be hard to get to China. They have a lot of other priorities.

I think we can press for them to adhere to the agreements with the

UNHCR, but we can also press for the UNHCR to invoke binding

arbitration. They have not done that. I have heard testimonies that

in Beijing they treat asylum seekers as nuisances. This is the international agency designed to help asylum seekers, and I think that

would be a good entry for the U.S. Government to work with the

U.N. to make sure that they are able to access the asylum seekers

along the border region through this agreement with China.

Senator BROWNBACK. It has been my assessment of the U.N.

High Commissioner on Refugees that he has been feckless in dealing with China, particularly on North Korean refugees.

Dr. Hassig, you stated in your testimony that North Korea is basically an economy or a country that runs on bribes now.

Dr. HASSIG. Yes.

Senator BROWNBACK. Do you have any thoughts or experience

about how long is that sustainable that a country runs on bribes?

Do we have any experience of that? North Korea does seem to be

following a model of a number of other economies, state-owned systems. When they fall down, they fall to the system because they

just look for some way to survive. Are we in for a long period of

this, or is it likely to change sometime soon to move away from a

country run on bribes?

Dr. HASSIG. It is a very tough question to come up with a very

clean answer. But in a recent North Korean study, I had an opportunity to interview a Russian specialist as well as a high ranking

official from Poland, who both of them visited North Korea many

times both during the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il era. And both

specialists basically explained that the analogy and similarity between the corruption of former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

on the one hand and corruption in North Korea on the other hand,

was frighteningly similar. They predicted that North Korea’s days

are numbered, maybe you can count them on your fingers. But

these two men are from a Judeo-Christian background, they are

Western analysts.

In my understanding, North Korea’s strength is that it is a Confucian family oriented traditional society that has survived from

the 19th century to the 21st century, in the sense that in North

49

Korean society, people are completely cutoff from outside information. Without their knowing about alternatives, I think the Kim

Jong-il system is very strong. So as long as Kim Jong-il and his top

cadres have the power to control, I think no matter what kind of

corruption exists in North Korean society, people will go to their

deaths instead of staging any kind of revolution. So in that sense

my answer is very pessimistic, unless we do something about

bringing news to North Korea.

Senator BROWNBACK. Unless we do something about bringing

news to North Korea.

Dr. HASSIG. Yes. As a matter of fact, I would like to present a

publication that I did for my institute. It was an internally supported research grant study after my book was published. One of

my recommendations in that book was that the North Korean people should decide their own fate. We have not given the North Korean people a chance to choose how they live. We have basically

dealt with only the North Korean high level political leaders because we were driven by proliferation concerns. So this is the time

maybe to think about how to bring the real news about the global

world. Then let the people choose.

My thinking is based on the fact that I came from South Korea

originally. When I grew up, I grew up in a very, very totalitarian

society, almost close to North Korean style: a dictatorial, military

regime that cut its people off from all outside relationships. And if

I remember correctly, in my high school days when I was reading

Newsweek given to me by an American missionary friend, it was

confiscated because it contained some bad remarks about the first

military leader, President Park. And yet, because we South Koreans were eventually given the freedom to learn about the outside

world, we changed the South Korean regime. So in that sense,

bringing the news into North Korea is the first order of priority,

in my understanding.

And I will leave this publication for your reference and future

study.

Senator BROWNBACK. Very good.

There is some indication that information is starting to get into

North Korea, and we have had panelists testify here today even

about that. That is what I am continuing to get. More and more

people that have gotten out or even refugees that have gotten out

and then are repatriated back in, they are seeing things that they

had not heard of before.

Dr. HASSIG. If I may interject one thing. Since I speak North Korean dialect—my parents were born in Pyongwon County which is

considered to be North Korea’s Fairfax County. Thay county has

produced a lot of professional elite, it is one of the richest counties.

I learned how to speak the North Korean dialect, and when Radio

Free Asia recently asked me to be an informal adviser, I accepted.

And I delivered a weekly commentary describing how Americans

live and why we are living in this way under different leadership— delivered in Pyongwon dialect. I have been told that some defectors

who listen to Radio Free Asia have been encouraged to look for an

escape route.

Dr. LINTON. Senator, can I say one thing about this? We have a

very, I think, wise and judicious policy of engaging North Korea on

50

diplomatic and nuclear-related issues in a multilateral context.

Nothing works better, however, than bilateral contexts in terms of

humanitarian aid. I think our foundation is an example of that because we are known as an American operation. So while maintaining a multilateral approach on the nuclear and weapons issues, we

really need to get more Americans—and I do not mean just regular

Americans, but I mean government Americans—on the ground in

North Korea because it proves itself again and again that the more

access that is permitted and the more projects that go on in North

Korea, the more they begin to have a better sense of what the real

world is like and the more they begin to feel that perhaps the

United States is not just only a hostile place.

So I would really argue for a bilateral humanitarian effort. We

say again and again that politics is separate from humanitarian

issues, but then we go ahead and negotiate these things on the

same table. I think we could teach the North Koreans a lot if we

would do that, and it would probably lead to an intersection and

eventually to the kinds of internal changes that we have seen in

China.

Senator BROWNBACK. We put a lot of bilateral aid, as you know,

into North Korea. The United States does.

Dr. LINTON. It is channeled through the U.N. which is the problem. The North Koreans ask again and again on the food issue.

They said why does the U.S. Government not send State Department officials to deliver this aid. We will take them to the countryside. And we ought to take them up on that.

Senator BROWNBACK. Is it labeled in U.S. sacks?

Dr. LINTON. It is labeled in U.S. sacks, but it goes through an

international agency. The worst part of it is Americans are not

passing it out. We really need to get American diplomats, not only

in Pyongyang, but throughout the country continuously engaged in

humanitarian issues. And I would guarantee you, over a period of

time, you would see a significant change in that society toward the

United States.

Senator BROWNBACK. We will see about that. That regime could

certainly choose that course as well.

I want to thank the panelists for being here today for talking

about the needs in the society. This is a different area that has not

had as much focus that I think it clearly needs to have. There is

a huge number of issues that the regime is causing to take place

throughout, and what we hope to show is the true level of suffering

that happens to the people as a result of this regime and, I might

add, the Chinese not helping out the people of North Korea either.

Thank you very much for joining us here today. It has been a

very positive, very good hearing.

[The prepared statement of the United States Commission on

International Religious Freedom follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF U.S. COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

INTRODUCTION

The people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea or DPRK)

are arguably the least free on earth, barely surviving under a totalitarian regime

that denies basic human dignity and lets them starve while pursuing military might

and weapons of mass destruction. By all accounts, there are no personal freedoms

of any kind in North Korea, and no protection for human rights. Religious freedom

51

does not exist, and what little religious activity that is permitted by the government

is apparently staged for foreign visitors.

North Korea is also a humanitarian disaster of unimaginable proportions. Failed

economic policies and natural disasters have reportedly left 1 million or more North

Koreans dead from starvation and disease in the last 10 years, and there may be

countless millions more, particularly children, who are stunted in both their mental

and physical growth. As awful as the physical toll has been, the deprivation of the

human spirit must be even greater. Just how bad the situation is in North Korea

is not known, since the ruling regime maintains strict control over communication

media and the flow of information into and out of the country.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM CONDITIONS

Religious freedom remains non-existent in North Korea, where the government

has a policy of actively discriminating against religious believers. The North Korean

state severely represses public and private religious activities. The Commission has

received reports that officials have arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes

executed North Korean citizens who are found to have ties with overseas Christian

evangelical groups operating across the border in China, as well as those who engage in unauthorized religious activities such as public religious expression and persuasion. Although access to updated information about North Korea remains limited, by all accounts, including testimony delivered at the Commission’s hearing on

North Korea in January 2002, there has not been any improvement in the conditions for religious freedom in the past year.

In recent years, the government has formed several religious organizations that

it controls for the purpose of severely restricting religious activities in the country.

For example, the Korean Buddhist Federation prohibits Buddhist monks from worshiping at North Korean temples. Most of the remaining temples that have escaped

government destruction since the Korean War are regarded as cultural relics rather

than religious sites. Similarly, the Korean Christian Federation restricts Christian

activities. Following the reported wholesale destruction of over 1,500 churches during Kim Il Sung’s reign (1948-1994), two Protestant churches and a Roman Catholic

church, without a priest, opened in Pyongyang in 1988, even though the absence of

a priest for Roman Catholics means that Mass cannot be celebrated and most sacraments cannot be performed. Several foreign residents have reported that they regularly attend services at these churches and that it is clear that whatever public religious activity exists, such as services at these churches, is staged for their benefit.

Persons found carrying Bibles in public or distributing religious literature, or engaging in unauthorized religious activities such as public religious expression and

persuasion are arrested and imprisoned. There continue to be reports of torture and

execution of religious believers. Although the practice of imprisoning religious believers is reportedly widespread, the State Department has been unable to document

fully the number of religious detainees or prisoners. The Commission learned from

testimony by defectors and experts at its January 2002 hearing, as well as subsequent reports, that prisoners held on the basis of their religious beliefs are treated

worse than other inmates. For example, religious prisoners, especially Christians,

are reportedly given the most dangerous tasks while in prison. In addition, they are

subject to constant abuse from prison officials in an effort to force them to renounce

their faith. When they refuse, these religious prisoners are often beaten and sometimes tortured to death.

Officials have stratified North Korean society into 51 specific categories on the

basis of family background and perceived loyalty to the regime. Religious adherents

are by definition relegated to a lower category than others, receiving fewer privileges and opportunities, such as education and employment. Persons in lower categories have reportedly been denied food aid. Thousands of North Koreans have fled

to China in recent years. Refugees who are either forcibly repatriated or captured

after having voluntarily returned to the DPRK are accused of treason; those found

to have had contacts with South Koreans or Christian missionaries are subjected

to severe punishment, including the death penalty.

COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS

In recent years, an increasing number of foreign government officials, journalists,

and representatives of NGOs have visited the DPRK and presented their observations about conditions in that country. At the same time, thousands of North Korean

refugees have left the country with information on conditions there. However, the

highly totalitarian state in North Korea still maintains such tight control over all

aspects of state and society that garnering verifiable information about conditions

in that country, as well as how the regime operates, is very difficult. This greatly

52

complicates the process of determining specific problem areas and, consequently,

well-calibrated solutions.

The U.S. should make every effort to encourage the DPRK government to maintain its currently limited contacts with the outside world and to open the country

to individuals, organizations, and governments concerned about the plight of the

North Korean people and who want to help. At the same time, the U.S. government

should, in its dialogue with the DPRK on issues of concern, also press the North

Korean government to allow foreign human rights monitors and humanitarian agencies access to all parts of the country.

The Commission makes the following recommendations:

• The U.S. government should develop and support ways to provide information

to the people of North Korea, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia

broadcasts, channels of people-to-people exchange, and other forms of contact

with North Koreans, particularly on religious freedom and other human rights

issues.

• The U.S. government should urge China, Russia, and other members of the

international community to grant refugee status to North Koreans.

• The U.S. government should urge the Chinese government to allow South Koreans and international NGOs greater access to northern China and greater capacity to serve the needs of North Korean refugees.

• In any discussions regarding humanitarian assistance, the U.S. government

should urge the North Korean government to allow considerable expansion of

both the amount of assistance and the number of providers, which should include non-governmental organizations.

• With all humanitarian assistance to North Korea, the U.S. government should

work to ensure that the delivery of such aid is adequately monitored. Monitors

should be able to read, speak, and understand the Korean language. The United

States should ensure that delivery of U.S. and other foreign aid is not misrepresented by the North Korean government through false claims that the aid is

being provided by that government.

• The U.S. Congress should expand its funding for (a) organizations advocating

the protection of human rights in North Korea and (b) activities that raise the

awareness of human rights conditions in that country.

• The U.S. government should launch a major international initiative to expose

and raise awareness of human rights abuses and humanitarian conditions in

North Korea, including expanded U.S. government reporting, congressional engagement, and multilateral diplomacy.

Senator BROWNBACK. The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:34 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.]

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