A large number of people died between 1997 and 1999 in my hometown, Hamhung, North Korea. In early spring, people sat exhausted by the road, or just collapsed on the street, and their bodies lay there. As summer came, the number of bodies increased, and death was everywhere in the city. There was a “Body disposal squad” whose job was clearing away the scattered dead bodies from many of the streets. The corpses collected by the disposal squad were buried under a nearby hill. Many were never identified, and were dumped together in one big hole. Soon, all of the hills near Hamhung were filled with graves. I noticed newly dug graves appearing every day on a small hill on the way to my friend’s house. There were often birds gathered around shallow graves, pecking away at any meat left on the bodies.
Our family didn’t escape death. My uncle wandered the city weak with hunger, but before he could die of hunger, he died of cholera. Both of my parents were weakened and, one after the other, became ill with an infectious disease called “paratyphoid”. As soon as they recovered somewhat, I was taken with cholera. Reduced to little more than skin and bones, I wasn’t even scared of death in the contagion ward, from which scores of bodies were carried out to the accompaniment of wailing. That summer, only a few people, including myself, left the hospital.
We couldn’t just sit and wait to die of hunger and disease, so we decided go to our relatives in China, who had settled in Northeast China during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 20th century. My mother and I left for China, promising my gravely ill father that we would be back in 10 days. When we finally crossed the Tumen River to China, I was lost for words. I watched as my relatives gave good white rice leftovers to their dog as if it were normal. With the image of countless people dying of starvation, without even a kernel of corn to eat, I was aghast at the sight of the dog carelessly eating leftover white rice. The shock of this scene never left me. Many years would pass before I truly grasped the significance of my horror.
After surviving in China for seven years, studying the Mandarin language, I was able to walk into the U.S. Embassy, passing through Chinese guards, to seek asylum in the U.S., but was instead directed to South Korea.
Seven years after leaving North Korea, I defected to South Korea. On the first day after my Settlement Support Center training (a place called Hanawon), I went to Seoul and saw a sign hanging: “Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights”.
I couldn’t take my eyes away from the sign. Human Rights! I had never heard these words until that moment. Do humans have rights? The concept was new. Was it true that we have rights? I was deeply moved by something and couldn’t explain it. People were working for the human rights and dignity of North Koreans. I wanted to cry for those still in the North.
We North Koreans have rights. We have the right not to starve to death, the right not to be forced to bow down to portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il every day, forced to clean them reverentially, rights to say whatever we want to say and not be sent to prison. We have the right to live in a free country. These are ‘Human Rights’.
Five years later, in 2011, Global Affairs Canada established the John Diefenbaker Defender of Human Rights and Freedom Award, and the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights was given its first award. I was with them for that historical moment in Ottawa, Canada.
December 10 is Human Rights Day. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They appealed to all nations to avoid tragedies like World War II and the Holocaust. Seventy-five years later, similar violations of human rights are still happening in North Korea. The Second World War saw people of other races and countries persecuted, but the Kim family government has turned its own people into physical and psychological slaves, locked them behind borders which are walls to keep people in.
An active North Korean human rights movement is a force for fighting this crime, and can counter Kim Jung Un’s nuclear weapons. Once North Korean citizens learn what human rights and freedom are, they will realize that the Kim family strips them of their rights and freedom. The best way to counter the Kim family’s nuclear weapons is to give real power to the North Korean people, knowledge of what is real human rights, to use it against their own government.
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