By Robert Oliver -
On January 29, 2018, I landed in South Korea for a short-term Department of Defense information-technology project at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek. The next day, I saw President Trump’s State of the Union address. At one point, he introduced a North Korean defector, Mr. Ji Seong-ho, a man who underwent unbelievable and terrible hardship in North Korea and eventually escaped in 2006.
I thought that I had to meet that man. A little over two weeks later, I met him in Seoul.
As there was little time to talk to him in his office to interview him fully, the video here will tell his remarkable story.
I met his brother Ji Cheol-ho, also a defector.
I met Shi-Woo Choi, a defector whose family is currently in North Korea, therefore must keep out of the public eye, and “David,” a North Korean soldier who risked his live by crossing the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in order to escape to freedom.
(The soldier in the photo to the right fits the description exactly of the subject of this CNN news report “Another North Korean soldier escapes to South Korea”)
In 2010, Ji Seong-ho founded Now Action & Unity for Human Rights (NAUH). Their English language website is http://www.nauh.or.kr/eng/main/main.php.
In this time of Korean diplomacy concerning denuclearization, the NAUH website clearly describes the current situation in North Korea:
North Koreans are presently living in constant fear and oppression and think to themselves that there is 'no safe haven' for them. The events that have unfolded in North Korea recently attest to this. It is an obvious and well-known fact throughout the world that North Koreans are living difficult lives, facing suffering through human rights violations, and are barely making ends meet.
There are people who, even now, live in a land that has resisted change for over 70 years, a land ruled by a family of leaders, a land of suffering. Even now, there are concentration camps for political criminals, as well as public executions of residents who do not subscribe to the state-endorsed ideology or behavior. Most recently, North Korean defectors in China are being arrested on a greater scale and mass executions are being held to punish people who have watched South Korean dramas. At the same time, there is also a shift in thinking among the residents, and many are expressing, ‘This is too hard. We are living in a totalitarian regime.’ This land of North Korea is a place where though you have a mouth, you cannot speak; though you have eyes, you cannot see; though you have ears, you cannot hear. It is a land that is impossible to understand from a normal perspective. However, even within these dire circumstances, there are those who have made it through life-or-death situations to become a member of our society.”
Would you like an example North Korean hospitality? The following is from a news report from the London Daily Mail:
Kim Jong-un ordered the execution of two high-ranking officials by anti-aircraft gun over fears that the dictator is preparing another purge against his people.
Ri Yong Jin, a senior official at the education ministry, was sentenced to death after he fell asleep in a meeting being addressed by Kim.
After accidentally dozing off, Ri was taken into custody and interrogated where security agents found evidence of his disloyalty and disrespect towards Kim.
Both men were executed by an anti-aircraft gun at a military academy in Pyongyang.
Another example from the London Daily Mirror:
A defector who fled Kim Jong-Un’s inner circle has told how she witnessed first hand the brutality the dictator unleashes on his oppressed people.
Hee Yeon Lim risked her own life to lift the lid on the paranoid North Korean leader who casually orders the executions of anyone he deems to have crossed him or his party.
The 26-year-old spoke out as crazed Jong-Un heads on a dangerous nuclear collision course with Donald Trump over his provocative missile testing that could end in all-out war.
Hee Yeon lived a life of privilege in the capital Pyongyang as she was the daughter of an army colonel– but her closeness to the regime did not protect her from being exposed to the horrors the despot dished out.
She revealed she was forced to watch a group of 11 musicians being viciously executed at a football stadium after they were accused of making a pornographic video.
Hee Yeon also told how Jong-Un enjoys £1,000 a time lunches while millions of his subjects survive on nothing more than grass or bark.
And she said the podgy brute plucks teenage girls from school as his sex slaves, despite being a married dad-of-three.
He also has hundreds of secret luxury boltholes deep within his rogue state to hide in, making it virtually impossible for foreign spy chiefs to track him.
And he forces even members of the elite to watch the executions he orders on a whim.
Speaking of the horrific one she saw, graduate Hee Yeon said: ‘We were ordered to leave our classes by security men and made to travel to Pyongyang. There is a sports ground there, a kind of stadium.
The musicians were brought out, tied up, hooded and apparently gagged, so they could not make a noise, not beg for mercy or scream.
They were lashed to the end of anti-aircraft guns.
There were around 10,000 people ordered to watch that day and I was standing 200 feet from these victims.
A gun was fired, the noise was deafening, absolutely terrifying and the guns were fired one after the other. The musicians just disappeared each time the guns were fired into them. Their bodies were blown to bits, totally destroyed, blood and bits flying everywhere.
And then after that military tanks moved in and they ran over the bits on the ground where the remains lay.
As a black American, I am sensitive to oppression. On both sides of my family, I have slave ancestry. Both my ancestors of the past knew and the political prisoners of the present North Korean prison camps know what brutality is. (See the following videos here, here, and here.)
I can relate to the longings for freedom of those who escaped North Korea. Therefore I feel I must support the efforts of NAUH and the efforts of other organizations that affect the rescues of North Koreans to the South.
I ask everyone reading this article to take action:
- Get self-educated on the history of North Korea and of the Korean War.
- Look up the many articles on North Korea defectors and their testimonies.
- Go to You Tube and look at the many videos on North Korea.
- Write letters to the editor of your local newspapers that will expose the current North Korean dictatorship.
- Write to your US Senators and Congressmen concerning the present state of affairs in North Korea and how they must publicly address it.
- Support NAUH and other like organizations such as No Chain for North Korea (https://www.facebook.com/NKNoChain/), and LIberty in North Korea (https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/) that rescue North Koreans from totalitarian slavery.
If it is financially possible for you, travel to Seoul, South Korea (Hotels, even good hotels, are very reasonable in price.) Live the reality. Find a tour that goes to the DMZ. You may even see one or more North Korean soldiers at the Joint Security Area at the building on the other side. (See the video here.)
Here is my take on diplomatic efforts for peace between North and South Korea as both countries are still technically in a state of war that existed since June 1950: These are issues that need to be resolved outside of denuclearization.:
- Concerning reunification — does Pyongyang intend to have communist rule from Seoul to Busan? Yes or no? Will it renounce all and any attempts to destabilize internally South Korea and to conquer South Korea by force?
- Concerning well-documented human rights abuses — is Pyongyang willing to “open the books” to the Red Cross and to other international human rights organizations? Will they allow any and all human rights abuses as documented by North Korean defectors be fully investigated?
- Concerning reunions of families in the North — will those in South Korea who have relatives in North Korea be free to visit without retribution and safe passage to and from their destinations?
- Concerning defectors — will those who want to leave North Korea be allowed to leave safely? Yes or no?
- Concerning badly-needed humanitarian aid — will any aid be monitored to ensure that it goes to the people and not to government cronies?
Ji Cheol-ho told me that Kim Jung-un, who is called the “Glorious Leader,” is considered like God in his country. He also told me that many in North Korea have doubts about the propaganda fed to them. They wonder if their country is the greatest country in the world as they are told, why do they endure hardships? But for their and their families survival, they have to play the game, to literally save their lives, of feigning adoration of “Glorious Leader.”
Our tour guide at the DMZ told us: “Reunification is our security.” If reunification is to happen, that would necessitate the dismantling of the “Glorious Leader’s” regime, freeing all the tortured political prisoners, and shutting down the prison camps, therefore ending the decades-long reign of terror.
Is there any reason why the lights in the North should not be just as bright as in the South?
Robert Oliver is a writer and an information-technology professional. Once a photo journalist in Chicago, he now lives in San Diego and can be contacted at robertcst1 (at) gmail (dot) com.
