Activists underline North Korean human rights

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

With the world's sights fixed on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, human rights organizations are working to raise awareness of the country's human rights abuses.

"The United States should make human rights a major component of its relations with North Korea, equal with the demand that North Korea stop developing nuclear weapons," Debra Liang-Fenton, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said in testimony before the U.S. Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Human rights activists like Mrs. Liang-Fenton are working to keep lawmakers from forgetting the prisoners in Pyongyang's network of brutal prison camps.

North Korean defector Soon Ok Lee, author of "Eyes of the Tailless Animal: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman," detailed her experiences at a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) conference July 15.

Miss Lee said that during her time in prison she witnessed many atrocities, including public executions and the murders of newborns by doctors.

"I have witnessed people being publicly executed and I know that they have children at home," Miss Lee said. "Like the Holocaust and Hitler of World War II, Kim Jong-il is doing the same thing today; he is killing his own people."

Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, said Korean refugees are being brutalized by North Korea's dictatorial regime.

"In the U.S. State Department's most recent human rights report, political prisoners [in North Korea] are often tortured, including severe beatings, electric shock, prolonged periods of exposure, humiliation and confinement to small 'punishment cells,'" Mr. Kyl said, addressing the NED conference.

The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimates that 400,000 people have died in North Korean prison camps since 1972. Some 30,000 North Korean refugees are estimated to be living in China.