South Korea’s foreign ministry says China has been holding four of its citizens in Dandong, activists linked to North Korean refugees, since their arrest March 29 in Dalian.

Spokesman Cho Byung-je says Seoul is asking Beijing to handle the case in a fair and swift manner.

“South Korea understands that the investigation is proceeding based on procedures under Chinese law,” said Cho, who did not comment on specific accusations because formal charges have yet to be levied.

The group appears to have been in contact with North Korean refugees in northeastern China to find about life and conditions in their homeland.

Seoul-based activists said at least one of the detained men, Kim Young-hwan, a prominent and controversial figure in human rights circles in South Korea, is likely to face spying charges.

Kim, an independent researcher with the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, known as NKnet, is best known for clandestinely boarding a North Korean submarine in 1991 in order to meet the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung. He later renounced his support for Pyongyang’s ideology and became a strong critic of the reclusive country’s human rights abuses.

The other South Korean detainees are identified as Yu Jae Gil, Kang Shin Sam and Lee Sang Yong.

Park Jin-keol, director of NKnet’s international department, said South Koreans who assist North Koreans in China do face danger, but that they are rarely arrested for spying.

“In other cases, usually these people are not charged with espionage,” he said. “Based on what Mr. Kim has been writing in South Korea, he never argued against the Chinese government. He only advocated human rights and the well-being of North Koreans. So we suspect that North Korean spy agencies or authorities are deeply involved in this incident by charging Mr. Kim and other people [in China] for espionage.”  [VOA News]

You can read more at the link.

The price for a North Korean woman named Kim Eun-sun, her mother, and sister, to escape to China was 2,000 Chinese yuan, slightly more than $300.

Like thousands of North Korean women before them, they crossed the Tumen River into China and met a woman who said she would help them escape –only to discover that they’d been sold to a Chinese farmer who wanted a wife.

“A lot of women come to China not knowing what they are getting into,” says Ms. Kim, who escaped the farmer with her family but was caught by Chinese police and then sent back to North Korea. “Women are secretly sold in China.”

After fleeing from North Korea to China a second time, Kim Yuen-sun, her mother, and sister eventually made it to Mongolia moving mostly on foot across the Gobi desert. Mongolian soldiers found them and delivered them to the South Korean Embassy in Ulan Bator whence they were flown to Seoul.

Now a senior in college here, she has received a US government grant that gives her eight months of English-language training and another semester of study in psychology at a US university. Wherever she goes, she conveys the message of the suffering inflicted on North Korean women, generally estimated by officials and activists to comprise at least 70 percent of the defectors who cross into China.

She believes that exposure of the plight of North Koreans, particularly women, is the best she can do to bring about change.  [Christian Science Monitor]

You can read much more about the human rights abuses committed against North Korean women at the link.

This is why I find it interesting how certain politicians complain there is a “War On Women” in the US and these same people could care less about a real war on women going on in North Korea and China.

Using updated Google Earth imagery and North Korean refugee witness statements One Free Korea has done an impressive job showing the existence of Camp 25 outside of Chongjin, North Korea.

Robert Park cried out in torment as you spoke on the phone from Seoul about what he had endured – not at the hands of the North Koreans who held him for 43 days after he crossed the frozen Tumen River into North Korea on Christmas Day, 2009, but about a South Korean report claiming to quote him on what he had endured.

The article carried by Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, purporting to quote his remarks about the sexual torture inflicted on him, is “fabrication”, he said, demanding “retraction” and accusing Yonhap of “corruption” for having run the story without his approval.

Just what happened to the 31-year-old crusader after he entered North Korea bearing a message of “God’s love” for North Korea’s late leader Kim Jong-il is not clear. What is known is that, when he was packed off to Beijing on an Air Koryo flight and released into the hands of an American diplomat, he was a broken man.

He’s still not saying exactly what got the North Koreans to say, before his release two years ago, on February 9, 2010, that he had “seriously repented of the wrong I committed, taken in by the West’s false propaganda”. Whatever it was, he’s been confined off and on to mental hospitals in Long Beach, California, and his native Tucson, Arizona, and lives in constant mental agony.

Gradually, however, Park is recovering to the point at which he can muster the strength and concentration to crusade full-time against what he says is the “genocide” committed by North Korea’s leaders against their own people. At the same time, he’s resolved to sue in the United States against North Korea for the “torture” inflicted on him – and hopes to recover funds from North Korean overseas accounts that he can then dedicate to his crusade.

But what did the North Koreans really do to him?

Park, often reluctant to talk to journalists, exploded in our conversation while talking about the Yonhap report quoting him as saying North Korean women had “surrounded me and did the worst thing to me to try to make me commit suicide”. The report said he had described how the women “beat his genitals with a club to ‘make me not to have a baby and get married forever’.”

One of the women mocked his evangelical Christian faith while he was suffering under the glare of a bright light, according to the Yonhap story, asking, “If your God is so great, why doesn’t he save you?”   [Asia Times]

You can read more at the link as well as over at Three Wise Monkeys who have a posting up on this topic as well.

It has been claimed that Robert Park was given a brain altering drug cocktail which may explain his current mental state, however I think Park was probably a little unstable before he was detained by North Korea.  Anyone that would willing walk into North Korea to be detained has to be a little unstable.

This is an international call to protest on December 9th, 2011, 63rd anniversary of the United Nations Genocide Convention which North Korea is violating in every possible way (For more information, please see “North Korea and the Genocide Convention”:http://hir.harvard.edu/north-korea-and-the-genocide-movement).

Please organize protests and hunger strikes in front of DPRK/PRC/UN offices (or other location), and let us know about your demonstration at connect@stopnkgenocide.com.

Confirmed Protests So Far:

New York City, United States
12:00pm: Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan , silent march to DPRK Mission to the UN
1:00pm: Demonstration at DPRK Mission to the UN
Speech by North Korean Defector Activist Ji Seong Ho (President of NAUH)
Event Coordinator: cbk2004@gmail.com
For Interviews, contact: iptbak@gmail.com

Seoul, Republic of Korea
3:00pm ~ 4:00pm : Demonstration at Seoul Station Plaza
4:00pm ~ 5:00pm: March to UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees)
7:30pm ~ 8:30pm: Candlelight rally in Seoul Plaza
Event Coordinator: pink2011info@gmail.com

Berlin, Germany
3:00pm ~ 6:00pm : Demonstration at the Brandenburg Gate
Event Coordinator: kimsunderhiswing@googlemail.com

Tokyo, Japan
12:00pm ~ 12:50pm Demonstration at Hachiko Square in Shibuya, Tokyo
1:30pm: Demonstration at Chongryon
Event Coordinator: kanandoj@yahoo.co.jp

London, UK
1:00pm ~ 3:00pm Demonstration at North Korea Embassy
Event Coordinator: S.Yang10@lse.ac.uk

There are three main objectives of these international protests on December 9, 2011:
1) To bring unprecedented pressure upon not only the NK regime but the international community to meaningfully address the horrific crimes being perpetuated systematically.
2) To influence and awaken global public opinion to the real, genocidal nature of the NK regime.
3) To create a watershed movement for the liberation of NK itself.

 Up to 200,000 political prisoners are languishing in North Korean prison camps, a sharp increase from 10 years ago, a United Nations envoy said Wednesday.

Compared to 2001, the latest satellite pictures of the country indicate a “significant increase in the scale of the camps,” said Marzuki Darusman, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in North Korea, in a report presented before the UN General Assembly.

He noted that some of the prisoners are being held just for being relatives of other detainees.

“I call on the authorities to move forward concretely and urgently on the release of political prisoners,” Darusman said.

He pointed to the “critical food situation” in communist North Korea, adding that international food aid was now “dwindling” and that the hermit country “continues to face regular, significant food shortages.”

Current government rations meet less than half the needs of most of the population of 16 million receiving public food supplies, Darusman said, citing briefings.

The head of UN humanitarian operations is currently visiting North Korea until Friday to evaluate the country’s humanitarian needs.  [Korea Herald]

A couple of good books I recommend reading about the conditions in these concentration camps is Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick and Long Road Home by Kim Yong.

It is a tribute to the Korean War and the US forces that fought in it. It included a display on NK Human Rights and other NK-related items like the sinking of the Cheonan and the recent artillery attack.

There was a pro-US group out working.

The pro-US, anti-NK group that promotes remembrance of the Korean War, North Korea’s provocations, and NK Human Rights had setup its long display of images from the Korean War and NK atrocities and provocations like the Cheonan Incident.

I didn’t have my still camera with me, but it was the same group and most of the same setup they put out not too far away during the recent NK Human Rights Week.

The display was on the edge of the sidewalk along the main road in front of the Seoul Finance Center (a short walk from City Hall and Kyobo Bookstore in the other direction).

Here are some shots of that.

For those interested you can read more over at One Free Korea or at the Justice4NK website.

North Korea is holding around 200,000 people in huge political prison camps where inmates are forced to work in conditions approaching slavery and are often tortured, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

The rights group published recent satellite images showing four of the six camps located in vast wilderness sites in South Pyongan, South Hamkyung and North Hamkyung provinces.

A comparison with satellite pictures from 2001 indicated a significant increase in the scale of the camps, which are believed to have been operating since the 1950s, it said.

Amnesty International spoke to a number of people, including former inmates from the political prison camp at Yodok, as well as guards in other camps, revealing what it said were horrific conditions.  [Reuters]

Normally I would say read the rest at the link, but don’t bother if you are someone who has been following this site or other North Korea related sites like One Free Korea that has long discussed everything Amnesty International is suddenly deciding to report.  As regular readers know I have been highly critical of Amnesty International in the past for their obvious politically and financially motivated concerns towards human rights.

You can read the actual report they released on North Korea’s camp on their website at this link. What I find funny is that they are treating their publishing of satellite imagery of the camps as something new when One Free Korea has for years been publishing detailed Google Earth images of North Korea’s camps without a word of recognition from Amnesty International.  If you can believe it that means that for this year, so far Amnesty International has released nine reports critical of South Korean human rights and only one for North Korea.

So this of course does little to change my opinion of Amnesty International.  If they promote North Korean human rights causes over the long term that would change my opinion of them.  In the meantime if people want to donate money to a worthy human rights cause they would be better off sending their money to organizations like Liberty in North Korea or the North Korea Freedom Coalition than Amnesty International.