Tortured and abused — the harrowing experiences of North Korean women prisoners

The United Nations has released a report that focuses on human rights abuses perpetrated against women in North Korea, recounting the ordeal of dozens of women at the hands of state security officers and police.

The 72-page report, released by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights simultaneously in Seoul and Geneva, details a wide range of rights abuses in North Korea, including detention in “inhumane conditions,” deprivation of food, torture, forced labor and violence, including sexual assaults.

All of the more than 100 women interviewed over a period of 10 years from 2009 reported hunger to the point of malnutrition. Many of them witnessed prison officials beating pregnant detainees so severely that they aborted their unborn child. Others saw guards rip new-born children from their mothers’ arms and kill them.

Calls by DW to the North Korea permanent mission to the UN in New York for a reaction to the report were not answered.

Read more: UN: North Korea abused forcibly repatriated women

Pyongyang denial

Before its release, the UN report was presented to North Korean officials seeking comments. Pyongyang has categorically denied the details in the study and has in the past accused the UN of falsifying its reports on the North, charging the organization with being a tool of the United States.

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  North Korea’s long killing streak

  Living in the crosshairs

  High-profile defector Hwang Jang Yop survived numerous assassination attempts before dying of natural causes at the age of 87. Hwang, who had been one of the leading ideologues of the North’s isolationist regime, escaped to South Korea in 1997. Just months before his death in 2010, Seoul authorities arrested two North Korean military officers over one of many plots to kill him.

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  North Korea’s long killing streak

  Uncle not ‘fed to the dogs’

  The execution of Kim Jong Un’s uncle Jang Song Thaek, once the second most powerful man in the isolated country, sent shock waves beyond North Korea’s borders. Many media outlets wrongly reported that he was fed to hungry dogs, as punishment for his “betrayal” of the ruling family. In reality, he was shot, according to Pyongyang officials and South Korean intelligence.

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  North Korea’s long killing streak

  Rumors of brutality

  In 2015, Seoul’s security services reported that North Korean Defense Minister Hyon Yong Chol was executed by an anti-aircraft gun. However, National Intelligence Service (NIS) soon appeared to backtrack from the report, saying that Hyon might still be alive. Reports of other brutal executions, involving artillery shells and flamethrowers, have also been difficult to confirm.

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  North Korea’s long killing streak

  Poisoned needle

  North Korean defector and well-known dissident Park Sang Hak was also targeted by a Pyongyang-linked hitman. In 2011, South Korean authorities arrested a former North Korean commando over the plot to assassinate Park with a poison-tipped needle.

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  North Korea’s long killing streak

  Removing a rival?

  The estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un was reportedly poisoned by two women at a Kuala Lumpur airport. While details remained sketchy, it was widely believed the killers were sent by the North Korean regime. The 46-year-old Kim Jong Nam had been living abroad after falling from grace in 2001 for visiting Disneyland in Tokyo.

In December, after the UN General Assembly condemned the North’s “long-standing and ongoing” human rights violations in an annual resolution supported by dozens of member states, Pyongyang warned that the US would “pay dearly” for criticizing its rights record.

Read more: Rights group: North Korean women face rampant sexual abuse

The UN office was set up in Seoul in June 2015 with the specific aim of documenting human rights abuses in North Korea and, at an appropriate time in the future, of prosecuting those accused of crimes against humanity. For this new report, investigators at the office interviewed women who had fled North Korea but had been subsequently detained, primarily in China, and forcibly repatriated and punished. The interviews took place after they were able to escape for a second time and find sanctuary in South Korea.

According to the report, women accounted for slightly more than 80% of the 1,047 people who managed to reach South Korea in 2019 after defecting from the North. It is not known how many people defected over the course of the year as many have been forced to stay in China, even though they are likely to be repatriated if they are caught by the authorities.

Food or money

The women interviewed by the UN said they crossed the border in search of food or to engage in unofficial trading to earn money and often planned to return to their homeland. Others relied on gangs that offered, for a price, to get people over the border into China but then sold them to Chinese men looking for a bride or into the sex industry or other menial and low-paid jobs.

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  Inside North Korea: an Instagrammer’s perspective

  Glimpses of normality

  Despite its image of being secretive, North Korea invites foreigners to discover its attractions. But traveling as tourists comes with strings attached, as special guides shadow their every step. The restrictions haven’t deterred Pierre Depont, who has visited the country seven times, capturing glimpses of the locals’ daily life.

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  Inside North Korea: an Instagrammer’s perspective

  Creeping capitalism

  Depont first traveled to North Korea in 2013 – and has since studied the changing face of the authoritarian country. During the last two to three years, he has observed “that in Pyongyang it has become acceptable to show off your wealth.” With a growing middle class and a construction boom, the capital seems to be defying international economic sanctions.

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  Inside North Korea: an Instagrammer’s perspective

  Pyongyang street style

  Connecting with everyday people isn’t easy, says Depont. “I had a couple of random conversations with strangers – always overheard by one of the guides.” In Depont’s experience, most locals don’t like to be photographed. “North Korean women are definitely getting more fashionable. But you can only see it in the cities.”

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  Inside North Korea: an Instagrammer’s perspective

  Urban vs. rural

  Commuting in style: this underground station in Pyongyang dazzles travelers with what looks like marble walls and chandeliers. To Depont, North Korea is “an amazing space for photography. You find no advertising at all, no distraction. It feels like a whole new game.” But while the capital – home to the elite – seems to be thriving, other parts of North Korea remain mired in abject poverty.

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  Inside North Korea: an Instagrammer’s perspective

  Hidden hardship

  To this day, North Korea remains a highly militarized, predominantly agricultural society. Tourists, however, don’t get to see much of the living conditions of the rural population. “Every little piece of land is cultivated, every square meter is used.”

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  Inside North Korea: an Instagrammer’s perspective

  Staged abundance?

  Tourists interested in life outside North Korean cities are taken on guided tours to showcase cooperative farms. When Depont visited one such farm near Hamhung, the country’s second-largest city, it featured a little market with a variety of neatly stocked goods. Depont recalls feeling like the shop “was just for show.”

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  Inside North Korea: an Instagrammer’s perspective

  Elite schools – a tourist attraction

  A stop at a model school is an important item on many tours’ agenda. The renovated international summer camp Songdowon was re-opened in 2014 and has been visited by the country’s current leader Kim Jong Un. “There is something unreal about it,” says Depont. “The kids play in the amusement room, using very advanced arcade games and around 20 modern computers.”

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  Inside North Korea: an Instagrammer’s perspective

  Omnipresent militarism

  The military is central to the country’s identity and the fabric of its society. Around a quarter of the population is employed as military personnel, while Pyongyang has one of the largest military budgets in the world relative to its economic output. From a very young age, North Koreans grow up with military imagery. Depont came across this miniature tank on a children’s playground near Hamhung.

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  Inside North Korea: an Instagrammer’s perspective

  Ritualized worship

  Alongside militarism, the high level of political control and the personality cult surrounding Kim Jong Un and his predecessors are ubiquitous. The everyday worship of the supreme leader has left a lasting impression on Depont. “You see the amount of money and effort that goes into holding up the story of the great leaders and their great statues.”

  Author: Helena Kaschel, Christine Bayer

North Korean women detained in China are invariably repatriated to the North, with those who are able to convince their interrogators from the Ministry of State Security that they were merely trying to make some money to survive, usually given a sentence of around one year in prison. Still, they reported facing frequent beatings as their abusers try to determine why they went abroad, who they met and their longer-term aims.

Treason convictions

For defectors who spent a long time abroad before being captured, were in contact with Christian groups, or are suspected of planning to travel on to South Korea — considered a political crime — the punishments are much more severe, the report points out. Those found guilty of this form of “treason” are invariably sent to one of the North’s five “kwanliso,” or political prison camps, for an indeterminate period of time. Ominously, the UN investigators have not been able to find a single survivor of a political prison to interview.

“I was beaten with a club by a preliminary investigation office and was kicked by the officer,” one woman interviewed for the study said. “If someone is found to have gone to a South Korean church while staying in China, they are dead. I therefore tried hard not to reveal my life in China. I was beaten to a level that my rib was broken. I still feel the pain.”

Read more: China: Thousands of North Korean women forced into prostitution: report

The women recounted being held in inhumane, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, with little or no access to fresh air or daylight. They were repeatedly subjected to torture, beatings and individual or collective punishment for failing to complete the hard labor assigned to them.

“During my time in prison, about five or six people died,” another woman said. “Most of them died due to malnutrition.”

None of the women interviewed for the project were identified out of concern for their safety or the well-being of their relatives still in the North.

“It is heartbreaking to read these stories of women who fled their country looking to make ends meet, but who ended up being punished,” said Michelle Bachelet, UN high commissioner for human rights, in a statement.

‘Justice, truth, reparation’

“These are women who have often been the victims of exploitation and trafficking. They should be taken care of, not detained and subjected to further human rights violations,” Bachelet added. “These women have a right to justice, truth and reparation.”

The report calls on the North Korean government to halt its systematic abuse of women held in detention and to bring its detention system into line with international norms and standards. It also urges other states to respect the principle of not repatriating individuals who are likely to have their human rights violated and to participate in any investigations into crimes against humanity.

In conclusion, the report says the UN Human Rights Office will continue to gather evidence “to support a process of criminal accountability, wherever and whenever possible.”

Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/tortured-and-abused-the-harrowing-experiences-of-north-korean-women-prisoners/a-54369861?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf