Aid group asks North to allow return of defectors

A round of the Forum to Improve North Korea’s Human Rights Record, held on May 22 at Pai Chai University, featuring speakers including Buddhist monk Beomryun, second from left. Lee Jong-geun

Comments made at forum on N.K. human rights

　

Progressives at a meeting regarding North Korean human rights suggested that the communist country abolish regulations restricting its citizens’ right to move and said that the North should allow defectors to return to their homeland without punishment.

The suggestion was made by Lee Seung-yong, director for peace and human rights of Good Friends, an aid group for North Korean refugees, during the fourth and last session of the Forum to Improve North Korea’s Human Rights Record, hosted by the group and sponsored by The Hankyoreh.

Based on meetings with North Korean defectors in China, Mr. Lee said to the forum, "Due to a chronic food shortage, psychological violence among North Korean people has increased and their morality is collapsing. Accordingly, they have behaved positively and raised their voices to fight for their existence. They have increasingly demanded their freedom to move."

Mr. Lee continued, "In the North, there also are a considerable number of unreasonable policies restricting citizens’ political freedom," such as a system which assigns punishment to a defector’s family and excessive punishment for criminal behavior, he said.

Mr. Lee urged the North Korean regime to guarantee its people’s economic activities, to allow individual subsistance farming, to make efforts to reform and open its land, and to cope with the defector problem properly. He also demanded that China prepare a safeguard for North Korean defectors. On the part of international society, he stressed the necessity of humanitarian aid for North Korea and normalization of diplomatic relations with the communist regime.

Seo Jae-jin, a senior researcher of Korea Institute for National Unification, maintained that keener attention should be paid on the social pressure within North Korea. "In order to improve the North Korean human rights situation, short-term measures such as humanitarian and development aid are necessary, but the only real solution is reform and opening of the entire North Korean system." Mr. Seo said that North Korean "social power to press its leadership is needed."

"To achieve social development, social classes such as groups of landowners, farmers, merchants, industrialists and intellectuals which disappeared at the beginning of the past regime should be reborn in the North," Mr. Seo said. "Then, they should exert influence on the North’s political power. By adopting economic reform measures in July 2002 which focused on reforming prices and enterprise management in commerce, agriculture, and external economic relations, North Korea is anticipating the witness of a new social structure."