Tag: North Korea

North Korea


North Korea admits to using the death penalty

November 2024

North Korea is back in the news recently having sent thousands of troops to aid the Russians in their invasion of Ukraine. They are also supplying munitions in return for, it is thought, technological help from Russia. They are also engaged in using the death penalty and we are reproducing a post from Amnesty on this.

North Korea has admitted carrying out public executions in a rare admission about its treatment of prisoners, ironically made during an effort to defend and justify its human rights record. Rights organisations have long accused Pyongyang of shooting dead convicts in public, and defectors from the isolated country have given gruesome accounts of North Korean executioners tormenting condemned prisoners, burning and mutilating them after death and forcing others to look at their corpses.

On one occasion, an estimated crowd of 25,000 in the northern city of Hyesan was forced to watch as nine people were executed by firing squad for having slaughtered government-owned cattle and distributing the meat to businesses.
“I kept thinking of the horrific scene of yesterday’s shooting, so I couldn’t sleep all night and trembled with fear,” one resident said.

North Korea defended its controversial law dictating harsh penalties for consuming foreign media on Thursday, while admitting that it carries out public executions and imprisons perpetrators of “anti-state” crimes. The DPRK government made the rare acknowledgement during the U.N.’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the country in Geneva, which examines the human rights record of member states every four to five years.

At a session on 14 November, a North Korea official offered striking admissions of human rights abuses in the country, even as he sought to justify them under state policies.
On the death penalty, Park said the DPRK executes individuals “who committed extremely serious crimes,” including publicly. 

Until now, North Korea has denied staging public executions and has sought to promote the idea that there is a legal framework with safeguards for treatment of prisoners.

Public executions are considered to be a way to keep the population in line. According to witness testimonies from the DPRK, public executions for watching or distributing South Korean films and drug smuggling have increased in recent years, as well sentences for “crimes against the regime”.

Public executions of young North Koreans are on the rise, Seoul says, as Pyongyang seeks to stamp out South Korea’s cultural influence. One North Korean defector to the South recounted witnessing the public execution of a 22-year-old in South Hwanghae province in 2022. The young man’s crimes were listening to 70 South Korean songs and watching and sharing three South Korean films.

The death penalty has always been available in North Korea’s legal system but a commentary on the North Korean Criminal Law 3, published by the North Korean authorities in 1957, suggests that the death penalty will eventually be abolished in North Korea and is presently utilised as a last resort.

The revised Criminal Code of 1987 mentions the death penalty as one of two kinds of “basic penalties” to be imposed on criminal offenders. The minimum age for imposition was lowered from 18 to 17 and the prohibition against the lowering of human dignity was scrapped. Under the 1987 Criminal Code, the death penalty is mandatory for activities “in collusion with imperialists” aimed at “suppressing the national-liberation struggle” and the revolutionary struggle for reunification and independence” or for “acts of betraying the Nation to imperialists”
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Religious persecution: North Korea


Report released by Korea Future on the persecution of religious believers in North Korea

A Report has been produced by Korea Future containing detailed evidence of the scale and extent of religious persecution taking place in North Korea. Entitled: Persecuting Faith: Documenting religious freedom violations in North Korea (vol 2) It is based on 456 documented cases of human rights violations involving 244 victims and 141 perpetrators.

There are two mains religious beliefs in North Korea: Shamanism and Christianity. Both are severely persecuted and those thought or accused of engaging in either are subject to brutal treatment. This includes physical beatings, ingestion of polluted food, positional torture, sleep deprivation and forced squat jumps.

The Ministry of People’s Security are responsible for 90% of the documented serious human rights violations against Shamanic adherents and the Ministry of State Security is responsible for 90% of violations against Christians. The difference is that Christianity is seen as a political crime and adherents are tried in secret. To possess a bible is to risk death.

Sources: Korea Future; Private Eye

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Minutes: June


Minutes of the June 2021 meeting via Zoom

We are pleased to attach a copy of the June minutes thanks to group member Lesley for preparing them. It was a full meeting marked by a decision to end the North Korea campaign which has run for over a decade. The group thanked Tony for his work on this campaign over the years. Although no longer a specific campaign, we will carry out actions from time to time if the opportunity arises.

    June minutes (Word)Download
    • Jihyun Park. Pic: Salisbury Amnesty
    • North Korean speaker in Salisbury
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    Ji-Hyun Park stands for election


    North Korean defector stands for election in Manchester

    The remarkable story of Ji-Hyun Park has become even more remarkable with the news that she is to

    Jihyun Park. Pic: Salisbury Amnesty

    stand for election in Bury, Manchester.  It is believed she is the first person on North Korean descent to stand for local elections in the UK.

    Hyun Park came to Salisbury four years ago and gave a moving talk on her escape from North Korea and an equally terrible existence in China.  An account of that talk can be found on this link.

    BBC report can be read here.  There is also a longer report in the Daily Mail.

    She was given a bravery award by Amnesty International last year.

    The Amnesty group discussed this at their monthly meeting and were delighted to hear the news.

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    North Korea – reports


    Human Rights Watch publishes grim report on DPNK

    The human rights situation in North Korea is grim and the regime is one of the most repressive in the world.  A report has just been published by Human Rights Watch called Worth less than an Animal which provides vivid descriptions of how prisoners awaiting trial are treated.  All political, social, legal, economic and civil rights are severely restricted and the use of torture, forced labour and other abuses represent a crime against humanity.

    There seems little likelihood of change in the near future.  China holds the key since the state relies on them to survive.  China has other problems of its own and is unlikely to want further instability and chaos which would ensue if Kim Jong Un was deposed.  The HRW report is similar in many respects to the earlier UN report on DPNK published in 2018.

    Other sources of information for those interested in the human rights situation in North Korea include Amnesty International which has pages dedicated to this country and the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

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    Kim Jong-Un


    Speculation over health of Kim Jong-Un and his Nation

    Kim Yong-Un

    The unprecedented absence of North Korea’s leader from its most important state celebration, the Day of the Sun on 15 April, has fuelled speculation as to the health of Kim Jong-Un.   Suggestions from Daily NK – news supplied largely from defectors – is that the leader has recently received heart surgery.  No confirmation of this has been made to date however.  Another theory is that the leader is being protected from Covid-19, since Kim Jong-Un is often seen in close physical contact with people, offering handshakes and hugs, which make him vulnerable to the virus.

    This secrecy surrounding his health inevitably extends to the health of the entire ‘hermit kingdom’.  While thousands have been quarantined, borders closed and tourists and foreign diplomats seen off, the government still insists there are ‘no cases in the country’.

    Kim is however eager to be seen as pro-active in protecting the nation from the virus.  He recently chaired a public health meeting and has issued hygiene advice nationwide.  Pyongyang has received test kits from Russia and from China while various items of protective equipment have been donated by UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders.

    The ‘great leader’ would be reluctant in any case to admit to the arrival of the virus since any weakness might invite criticism of his regime.  It was fear of reporting the disease to central government that allowed it initially to spread in China but whether North Korea will learn from this lesson seems unlikely.  A defector who recalls practising medicine during the SARS outbreak of 2002/03 said that not only was medical equipment seriously lacking then, but deaths were going unrecorded.

    Certainly the sheer length of the border between North Korea and China, and its regular use by smugglers and traffickers, would suggest that the virus might enter relatively easily. If it did, that would be a tragedy for the 40% of North Koreans reportedly undernourished. And while new hospitals have been built under Kim’s rule, experts say they mostly benefit the elite in this two-tier nation.

    This month the defector Thae Yong-Ho made history by winning a constituency seat in South Korea’s government. Once deputy ambassador to the UK, he says he is determined to work for the freedom of his compatriots who live in virtual ‘slavery’.  The high price defectors pay (and there are on average 1000 per year) is the knowledge that their extended families will be detained, or worse, in one of the country’s many detention centres and labour camps.

    Human rights, and the health care that these insist on, are sadly in very short supply in North Korea.

     

     

    Sources: The Guardian, ABC News, TPM Seoul.

     

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    Cathedral Evensong


    Annual Evensong held in the Cathedral

    Update: 14 March.  Ben Rogers has kindly sent us the text of his talk which is attached at the bottom of this post.

    The Salisbury group is grateful to the Cathedral for holding an Evensong once a year marking the work of Amnesty International and enabling us to nominate a speaker during the course of the service.  About 60 attended last nights service.  For many years the Cathedral has provided space for the group to display each month an appeal for a Prisoner of Conscience.  This month it is Ahmed Mansoor a human rights defender and POC who is in prison in Abu Dhabi.  The Cathedral has a window dedicated to the work of Amnesty.

    We were delighted to invite Benedict Rogers (pictured) to speak who, among other things, has a particular interest

    Ben Rogers at Salisbury Cathedral (picture, Salisbury Amnesty)

    in North  Korea.  Ben is East Asia Team Leader of CSW, a Christian charity which promotes religious freedom around the world.

    He said that the UN regards North Korea to be in a category all of its own as far as human rights are concerned.  It violates every single human right.  As a member of CSW, they were the first to call for a commission of enquiry and two years later in 2014, the UN did so.

    The gravity, scale and nature of abuses has no parallel in the modern world he said.  The report found that:

    North Korea had committed crimes against humanity and manifestly failed to uphold its responsibility to protect. These crimes entail “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.  Source, Wikipedia

    In 2007, CSW produced a report A Case to Answer.  A Call to Act which concluded that the human rights situation in North Korea was a crime against humanity.   Although things seem bleak, he said there were some glimmers of light.  In a recent report, Movies, Markets and Mass Surveillance, it was noted that North Koreans were getting more information about the outside world.  They were beginning to realise that life south of the border was better.  There was anecdotal evidence that prison guards did realise the world was watching.

    The regime saw Christianity as a particular threat.  Anyone caught practising it faced severe punishment or could be executed.  If a carol was allowed it would only be ‘We three Kims of Orient are!’

    Those who did manage to escape to China were sent back to face severe punishment in the prison camps.  There were around 200,000 thousand people in the prison camps he said.  He ended with the famous quotation mistakenly attributed to Edmund Burke:

    The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

    Ben Rogers talk (Word)

     

     

     

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    Minutes of the January meeting


    Lively meeting this month and we were pleased to welcome another new member.  We discussed the death penalty report; North Korea; the UK government’s possible changes to the Human Rights Act and forthcoming events.  We also discussed the closure of the neighbouring New Forest group which we hope may not be permanent.  Next meeting on 13 February.

    January minutes (Word)

    If you are interested in human rights and would like to join us you would be very welcome.  You will see our events at the end of the minutes so making yourself known at one of those would be a way to join.  It is free to join the Salisbury group.  One of our concerns is the new government’s plans to possibly weaken human rights especially when we leave the EU so helping us with that would be appreciated.

     

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    Monthly meeting


    The next monthly meeting is on May 9th at Victoria Road as usual starting at 7:30.  Supporters are very welcome to attend.

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    Meeting minutes


    Minutes of the group meeting held on 11 April 2019 are attached thanks to group member Lesley for compiling them.  We discussed North Korea, the death penalty report, future events including a film night, a market stall and a talk by the author and journalist Paul Mason in June.  There are also some statistics of our social marketing showing quite a busy month.

    If you are interested in joining the local group and live in the south Wiltshire area then coming along to one of our events is the best thing to do and you will find a list at the end of the minutes.

    April minutes (Word)

     

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