Wednesday, June 25th, 2003
Remarks by Suzanne Scholte, President, Defense Forum Foundation
I want to thank Senator Sam Brownback on behalf of the North Korean refugees for the legislation that he will introduce today. I will discuss briefly why this legislation is so critical.
As many of you know, the horror stories pouring out of North Korea are among the worst in the world today: death camps where even children are imprisoned and forced to do hard labor; whole families committing suicide together to avoid the slow, painful death of starvation; parents cradling their starving children in their arms unable to offer them any food; people subsisting on bark and grass and others reduced to cannibalism; a regime indifferent to the suffering of its people that uses food as a weapon against them diverting it to its military and party elite and preventing aid from reaching whole regions of the country.
Fleeing starvation, these helpless refugees arrive in China where they are hunted down like criminals. The Chinese government offers financial rewards for those citizens who turn in these desperate starving refugees, while jailing humanitarian workers who go to China for the main purpose of providing them food and shelter. If these refugees are caught and returned to North Korea, they face imprisonment, torture, and in many cases, execution for committing the crime of leaving their country.
What would be shocking to Americans is to know that North Korean refugees have made desperate attempts to seek asylum in American consulate offices. Often, this is because the embassies and consulate offices that speak their language, the Republic of Korea, turn them away. Some North Koreans feel that they will have no freedom to speak out about the atrocities in their homeland if they go to South Korea. Such is the case of Song Yong-Bom (age 38) and Chung Bum-chul (age 36). They made it over the wall of the American consulate office in Shenyang on May 8 of last year. Song had been rejected twice by South Korean officials who threatened to contact Chinese officials if he did not leave their offices. He did some research and decided he wanted to come to the Land of the Free, the United States of America. He had heard of a North Korean refugee, Kim Son Hee, who gained political asylum in the United States via Mexico.
After he and Choi jumped into the US consulate office in Shenyang, they went on a hunger strike demanding to be allowed to go the United States. The U.S. officials refused their request, threatening that they would be thrown out of the consulate office and turned over to
Chinese security, if they did not give up their desire to go to the United States. Song raised the case of Kim Son Hee, but the American official denied the case every occurred. The North Koreans stood firm, but after five days they gave up their fast, when the American officials tricked them into believing they would be allowed to meet with UNHCR officials in Singapore to apply for political asylum in the United States. However, when they arrived in Singapore they were turned over to South Korean authorities who in turn turned them over to Korean intelligence officials in Inchon airport.
This is just one example--there are others and there are refugees hiding today in China with the fervent hope that they may seek political asylum in the United States.
Senator Brownback’s legislation is vitally needed. Currently, we are ignoring their plight with the excuse that they are automatically citizens of the Republic of Korea and it’s their problem, not ours. But, it is our problem because North Korea is the worst human rights tragedy in the world today, and history will judge how we respond. The North Korean regime will collapse one day and when it does, we, not just as Americans, but as human beings will he held accountable for how we responded to the horrendous human suffering being faced by our brothers and sisters in North Korea. Senator Brownback, thank you for your leadership and devotion to the North Korean people.
