N.K. Human Rights Abuses for Defectors

It was reported that there were instances in which North Korean defectors were imprisoned as criminals or executed in North Korea, the U.S. State Department announced on March 31, accusing Pyongyang of its poor human rights record.

According to annual country reports on human rights practices released by the U.S. State Department on that day, a considerable number of North Korean defectors have fled to Asian nations through China since the mid-1990s, and the Pyongyang regime is said to have ordered North Korean guards to shoot defectors on sight.

The report on Pyongyang added that there are press releases stating the fact that North Korean women and children are being sold to China. The report says that there were reported instances of extra-judicial killings and repeated reports of missing people and that North Koreans are detained arbitrarily, and in fact, a number of residents are in jail as political prisoners. North Korean authorities prohibit live births in prison so "forced abortion and the killing of newborn babies reportedly are standard prison practices."

"The North Korean leadership views most international human rights norms, particularly individual rights, as illegitimate, alien, and subversive to the goals of the State and Party," the report said.

The nation has a draconian penal code which stipulates "capital punishment for a wide variety of crimes" such as "defection, attempted defection, slander of the policies of the State Party, listening to foreign broadcasts, writing reactionary letters, and possessing reactionary printed matter," according to the human rights report.

The Pyongyang regime has tight control over many aspects of people’s lives and through a human rights dialogue initiated by the European Union in 2001 led to another human rights dialogue, the regime acknowledged international standards of human rights which do not apply to North Korea, the report said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department’s human rights report on South Korea says that though in general, human rights of citizens are respected, there are problems in some areas, citing the police’s physical and verbal abuse of detainees.

The use of the National Security Law (NSL) continues to infringe upon citizens’ civil liberties and there still remain serious social problems such as domestic violence, rape, and child abuse, the report said.

It also explained that South Korea is "a major transit point for alien smugglers including traffickers of primarily Asian women and children for the sex trade."

In a clause titled, "Freedom and Speech and the Press," the report talked about the Kim Dae-jung government’s having conducted tax investigations of major media companies and suspicions that the government tried to curb media criticism, which was also mentioned in the 2001 human rights report.

maypole@donga.com