North Korean Defector Day Speech

On my recent trip to South Korea, I had the opportunity to attend Public Sessions hosted by the UN Office in Seoul. The Public Sessions featured moving testimonies from North Korean refugees who primarily escaped after the pandemic. Their testimonies served as a vivid reminder that the Kim regime’s brutality not only continues but has deepened both during and after the pandemic. All of the testimonies were incredibly moving, but one stood out in particular.

An anonymous escapee recounted how COVID-era restrictions didn’t just result in deaths from the virus, but from starvation. He recalled how he was forced to visit a home and recover the bodies of an entire family who starved to death. 

A mother. 

A father. 

A son. 

A daughter. 

He said he couldn’t bring himself to look at the children. But he was responsible for the body of the father. The father was a previously able-bodied man, but what was left was mere skin and bones. The escapee recalled paper-thin skin around his wrist with horror. When the escapee entered the home, it appeared as if the family was preparing dinner. There was still a small bit of rice left stuck to the pot they were boiling. Proof of their humanity and that only recently they were still alive. Their deaths were senseless, caused by the regime’s COVID restrictions and meager rations distributed too limitedly to meet the needs of this family. 

After witnessing this family’s death, the North Korean refugee decided it was time to leave North Korea.

This story is gut-wrenching. This family is the same size and composition as my own. And by mere place of birth, my kids are well-fed, safe, and alive. If this were my family and someone heard my story, I would hope that they would not only speak out, but that they would act.

It is for families like this one and escapees like the one brave enough to share his testimony at the UN Public Session that we are here today. To think critically about the path forward and how best to advance human rights in North Korea.

At this very moment, the Kim regime is operating at the strongest it has been – certainly in my lifetime. The regime’s ongoing support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is incredibly concerning. The decision to lend not only material support, but also manpower to the war effort is significant and worrisome. Increasingly strong ties between Russia and North Korea are compounded by relatively healthy ties with China. With friends like these, who needs enemies. 

Despite the fortification of the regime’s power, Washington has devoted very little energy and attention to North Korea, regardless of administration. And even less attention to the human rights violations the regime perpetrates to maintain power. A concrete strategy to counter the regime has not emerged in Trump’s second term.

This is shortsighted and concerning.

Right now, North Korea is fortifying its weapons development and ties to concerning allies precisely at the same time that its engaging in historic crackdowns on the North Korean people. This is likely not a coincidence. 

1. Future administrations must recognize the interconnectedness of the threat North Korea poses to both rights and security.

• In a 2023 report spearheaded by Bob Joseph that I contributed to entitled “National Strategy for North Korea”, a group of policy experts argued for a shift in U.S. strategy toward North Korea: specifically, one that takes stock of the threat the regime poses to both security and human rights. Most importantly, the report recognized that the two issues are far more interconnected than current policy acknowledges.
• The regime uses human rights to maintain its grip on power. It requires an acquiescent population for the regime to possess cart blanche approval for things like its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, its lavish spending on luxury goods and facilities that consistently enrich the regime and the elite, and the development of its nuclear and missile weapons programs. This is especially true in the present moment where the regime is both heightening human rights violations to 1) maintain power, and 2) generate revenue.
   

2. The regime is heightening human rights violations to maintain power.

• Food insecurity and starvation exacerbated by the pandemic. Food insecurity has worsened during and after the pandemic. During the pandemic, access to food and basic necessities were severely limited as the regime cut North Korea off from the world far more severely than many foreign sanctions could. According to several refugees’ testimony at the UN Public Sessions, families were rationed 10 kg of rice which could not last even a month. Since the pandemic, the regime has cracked down on market activities that once served as a critical lifeline for money, food, and information for North Koreans. Without that lifeline, North Koreans lost an additional means of subsistence that didn’t require complete reliance on the regime. This marks a notable transition from the jangmadang generation of North Korean refugees pre-dating the pandemic, to a new generation that does not have the jangmadang to rely on. This has implications for defections and the North Korean population that makes it to South Korea. The regime implemented shoot-to-kill orders during the pandemic to prevent people from escaping and the numbers reflect a rapid decline in defections from at least 1,000 defectors fleeing annually pre-pandemic to approximately 200 or less post-pandemic. Even the demographics of those who defect are fundamentally different now: those who defect today are predominately older women who lived in China for many years and their half-North Korean children born in China, as opposed to the young market-oriented men and women of yesteryears.
• Public executions. Public executions are not uncommon and can occur for a range of reasons: watching South Korean dramas, listening to or watching foreign media, possession of a Bible etc. A 2021 report from the Transitional Justice Working Group, a South Korean-based advocacy organization, interviewed nearly 700 North Korean refugees, 442 testified that they witnessed public executions. In short, approximately 65 percent of people interviewed witness public executions. Since that time, the regime has instituted new legislation that has intensified restrictions on North Korean fundamental freedoms and created additional crimes punishable by public execution. For example, post-pandemic the regime has introduced the Anti-Reactionary Thought Law to crackdown on foreign media and outside information consumption and the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Law which exact harsher punishments for using South Korean dialect or words.
• Three generations policy and political prison camps. Prison camp populations have likely increased during and after the pandemic since the regime sent individuals to both the ordinary and political prison camps for COVID violations and also in response to newly defined crimes created through the Anti-Reactionary Thought Law and Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act etc. The threat of sending three generations to a political prison camp has a historical legacy of creating an environment of fear. Once in the camps, there have even been reports of prisoners (as well as other vulnerable populations like the elderly and kotjebi orphaned children) having chemical and biological weapons tested on them. Demonstrating that political prison camps aren’t just for repression, but also support the regime’s weapons development. One HRNK report even highlighted the proximity of Camp No. 16 and the Punggyeri nuclear test site in North Korea, demonstrating possible linkages between the two facilities, where the regime may force prison camp populations to work as part of the development of the weapons program.
   

3. Pyongyang also uses human rights violations to generate revenue for the regime.

• Forced labor. The regime uses a variety of forms of forced labor to keep the population in check and to generate revenue for the regime. North Korea forces people to labor both inside the country, especially in the camps, as well as overseas. Russia and China house the majority of North Korean overseas forced laborers today, but previously, an Asan Foundation report found that more than 40 countries globally employed North Korean forced laborers. As recently as earlier this week, North Korean IT workers were sanctioned by the U.S. government. North Korean IT workers often work abroad and are forced to labor for the regime, too. Reporting from DailyNK suggests that many mainstream U.S. and multinational companies may unwittingly employ North Korean IT workers who then send wages back to the regime. Analysts once estimated profits from forced labor between $120 million and $250 million annually. Although several countries have discontinued their practice of employing North Korean forced laborers, the US Department of State estimated in its 2023 Trafficking in PersonsReport that the regime makes hundreds of millions annually in confiscated wages from North Korean forced laborers abroad.

Given the threat that the regime is posing to both U.S. national security and human rights at this moment, it makes it even more concerning that the Trump administration is undermining the very tools designed to safeguard and defend human rights in North Korea. The administration’s reorganization of the U.S. Department of State severely undermines the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), the Bureau at State most responsible for safeguarding and defending human rights around the globe. While I was in South Korea a few weeks ago, South Korean NGOs devoted to safeguarding human rights in North Korea were notified that most likely all of their previously appropriated U.S. government grants would be terminated. These grants support funding for information access to North Koreans, critical research on forced labor, psychosocial and counseling support for North Korean refugees, and documentation work critical for future judicial accountability for the Kim regime, among other important activities. If grants are cut as planned, many of these organizations may not survive through the end of the summer, much less the end of the year.

Cuts aren’t just affecting grants, they will also potentially affect key staff that have historically been chief advocates for North Korean human rights. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the administration intends to appoint a Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights, no one has been appointed yet. And Congress has also not reauthorized the North Korean Human Rights Act. U.S. inaction is corresponding with the recent election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung who is no fan of human rights in North Korea and has already restricted broadcast and information access efforts at the border which not only severely limits access to information in North Korea, but also impacts the civil liberties of South Korean advocacy organizations. 

If past policies failed to recognize the interconnectedness of human rights and national security in U.S. foreign policy, current U.S. policy is hamstringing efforts to defend human rights and freedom at levels that will be felt for generations. It is incumbent on those of us who care about North Korean human rights to not only raise our voices and express our concerns, but to come together to pool critical financial resources. Now is the time to demonstrate the resilience of private donors and civil society.

To that end, I wanted to offer a handful of suggestions on good U.S. government policy, as well as ways for civil society to support future good human rights policies:

1. At this moment, the most important thing that can be done is to oppose DRL funding cuts for North Korean human rights organizations, and critically, to pool resources in support of civil society groups facing U.S. government funding cuts. In order for civil society groups to survive through the end of the year, they will need private financial support. I am not asking this for me. Hudson is fine and not in need of money, but groups like DailyNK, Transitional Justice Working Group, NKDB, Citizen’s Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, and others need financial help to continue their critical work. The policy community will be worse off without their efforts and information. And most importantly, the North Korean people will suffer without continued leadership and support in both Seoul, Washington, and elsewhere. The administration and Congress should also hear concerns from constituents about proposed cuts.
    
2. Improve funding and support for information access in North Korea. What keeps me up at night is the possibility that various lines of information into North Korea will go dark. Radio Free Asia already suspended broadcasts into North Korea in April and laid off its staff in Seoul a few weeks ago. With Lee Jae-Myung cutting South Korean support for broadcast and information access and the U.S. doing the same, the North Korean people risk losing access to a critical lifeline: information. There is not a single North Korean refugee you meet who will not tell you that access to outside information was the impetus behind their decision to flee the country. Information provides agency and the ability to decide whether to flee the regime or facilitate change from within. We cannot lose this critical lifeline. Grants through the North Korean Human Rights Act and the Otto Warmbier Countering North Korean Sanctions and Surveillance Act were intended to fund grants for information access and under the current administration, those risk not being implemented despite already being congressionally-appropriated for VOA and RFA. These efforts legally must continue in some form and we as ordinary people should raise our voices in support of these efforts.
    
3. Mobilize around the release of the UN’s update to the Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Human Rights in the DPRK, slated to be published in September. The update to the COI will reflect on the regime’s changing repression since the release of the original COI in 2014. The original COI determined that North Koreans face ongoing crimes against humanity. In a recent Hudson Institute report on the update to the COI, I argue that the update should include new statistics on the size of the political prison camp population, updates from the pandemic and its impact on North Korean human rights, and even consider whether North Koreans face additional crimes, including genocide.
    
4. Use the momentum from the COI update to press the administration to issue an atrocity determination for North Korea. I have written for Hudson on the need for an official U.S. government-issued atrocity determination for North Korea. My own research found evidence that North Korean Christians, as well as other vulnerable populations, may face ongoing genocide in addition to crimes against humanity, but a determination issued by Secretary Rubio that North Koreans face only ongoing crimes against humanity would be well-founded in fact from the 2014 COI and a win for the North Korean people.
    
5. Consider whether Congress can reauthorize the North Korean Human Rights Act. The lapsed North Korean Human Rights Act is concerning for several reasons. 1) It conveys a lack of congressional attention to the issue at a critical moment. 2) It creates a lapse in grants and funding to support the North Korean people and civil society, especially for information access efforts that remain essential. 3) It risks the administration claiming that they have no legal obligation to appoint a Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights, as they did in the first term.

The North Korean people need the support of civil society and governments in both Seoul and Washington to safeguard and defend their human rights, especially when the regime does not. As members of civil society, we must raise our voices in support of the North Korean people at this critical juncture and press our elected leaders to sustain and improve efforts to defend promote freedom for the North Korean people.

Many thanks to Yusook Kim and the Alliance for Korea United for the invitation to address you today. It is my joy to be here and to partner with you as we seek a better future for the people of North Korea.