•HRES 109 EH
tion in support of the cult of personality glorifying Kim
Jong Il and the late Kim Il Sung which, in the words of
the State Department, ‘‘approaches the level of a state
religion’’;
Whereas the North Korean regime divides its population into
categories, based on perceived loyalty to the Party and
the leadership, which determine access to employment,
higher education, place of residence, medical facilities,
and other resources;
Whereas the North Korean regime attempts to control all in-
formation, artistic expression, and academic works inside
North Korea and strictly curtails freedom of speech;
Whereas the Government of North Korea holds an estimated
150,000 to 200,000 political prisoners in camps that its
State Security Agency manages through the use of forced
labor, beatings, torture, and executions, and in which
many prisoners also die from disease, starvation, and ex-
posure;
Whereas according to eyewitness testimony provided to the
Committee on International Relations of the House of
Representatives by camp survivors, camp inmates have
been used as sources of slave labor for the production of
export goods, as targets for martial arts practice, and as
experimental victims in the testing of chemical and bio-
logical poisons;
Whereas according to eyewitness testimony provided to the
Committee on International Relations by a camp sur-
vivor, female camp prisoners are not permitted to have
children and their newborn babies are routinely and bru-
tally killed by camp authorities;
•HRES 109 EH
Whereas according to the State Department ‘‘[g]enuine reli-
gious freedom does not exist’’ in North Korea and, in the
words of the United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom, ‘‘[t]he North Korean state severely
represses public and private religious activities’’;
Whereas the United States Commission on International Reli-
gious Freedom has highlighted ‘‘reports that [North Ko-
rean] officials have arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and
sometimes executed North Korean citizens who were
found to have ties with overseas Christian evangelical
groups operating across the border in China, as well as
those who engaged in such unauthorized religious activi-
ties as public religious expression and persuasion’’;
Whereas according to eyewitness testimony provided to the
Committee on International Relations in May 2002, a
North Korean prison camp survivor witnessed a group of
Christian prisoners being tortured to death in 1990 for
refusing to repudiate their faith;
Whereas more than 1,000,000 North Koreans are estimated
to have died of starvation since 1995 because of the fail-
ure of the centralized agricultural system operated by the
Government of North Korea;
Whereas the risk of starvation and the threat of persecution
in North Korea have caused many thousands of North
Koreans to flee their homeland, primarily into the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China;
Whereas the Governments of the People’s Republic of China
and North Korea have been conducting aggressive cam-
paigns to locate North Koreans who are in the People’s
Republic of China without permission and to forcibly re-
turn them to North Korea;
•HRES 109 EH
Whereas North Koreans who seek asylum while in the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China are routinely imprisoned and tor-
tured, and in some cases killed, after they are returned
to North Korea; and
Whereas the 59th session of the United Nations Commission
on Human Rights is scheduled to be held in Geneva,
Switzerland from March 17 to April 25, 2003: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives—
(1) urges the Secretary of State to support efforts
to draft, introduce, and pass a resolution addressing
human rights abuses in North Korea at the 59th session
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights;
(2) urges all members of the United Nations Com-
mission on Human Rights to support a resolution ad-
dressing human rights abuses in North Korea at the
59th session of the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights; and
(3) calls on the Government of the Democratic Peo-
ple’s Republic of Korea to respect and protect the
human rights of its citizens, such as those recognized in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Attest:
Clerk.