The band, Ooberfuse, has released a new song about the North Korean situation today, April 15th – Vanish the Night – as a cynical marking of Kim il-Sung’s 101st birthday.
The following wide-ranging interview by reporter, Kim So Yeol, with Christian activist Tim Peters, founder of Helping Hands Korea and long-term advocate for North Korean Human Rights, was conducted last month for an article that appeared in the February 2013 issue of NK Vision. Thank you to NKnet intern Nova Mercier for transcribing the interview and doing much of the editing. Read article in Korean based on this interview
What changes do you hope to see in regards to North Korean issues? Naturally, because life in North Korea for the rank and file is so deplorable and constrained, I have many aspirations for improvement. One of the most urgent would be to see a resolution of human rights violations in North Korea, the conditions are especially desperate in the DPRK’s prison system.
My hope is that the South Korean government becomes much more courageous in standing up for the rights of North Koreans, particularly those in transit from North Korea to South Korea. I hope that the new administration in Seoul will strongly defend their rights, as these people are in great danger after leaving North Korea.
There are so many areas in which improvements need to be made! I also hope the US, Japan, EU, and South Korea could separate trade issues from refugee and human rights issues when dealing with China. This is a barrier to progress in protecting refugees and stateless children in China. All aspects of the relationships between major governments seem to be held hostage to trade considerations. This is highly unfortunate and I hope that these issues can be decoupled and dealt with in a firm and principled way.
Essentially, governments have to ask themselves: do we really believe in justice? Do we really believe in protection for the vulnerable? Do we really believe in humanitarian values? Or are we a purely mercantile society that wants trade at any cost?
I fully understand that every society has to make a decision about what is most important to its members. But if we truly call ourselves democracies and republics, and we really care about the rule of law and human rights and freedoms, our commitment to those values should not vacillate depending on the economy. We should not be a fair-weather friend in our commitment to human rights and other personal freedoms. READ MORE:
Escape from Camp 14, Shin Dong-hyuk in a North Korean prison for 23 years
“Born in a prison camp, Shin Dong-hyuk describes how three generations of a family are incarcerated if one family member is considered disloyal. Anderson Cooper reports.”(quoted from the CBS News 60 Minutes website)
***Note: HHK’s director was part of an activist team that traveled with Shin Dong-hyuk to the UK when Shin gave his testimony to the UK Parliament and major British media. A second trip was made not long after to Denmark. Helping Hands Korea has carried out its work of helping North Korean refugees and all North Koreans in crisis for the past 16 years and continues this work to the present under difficult circumstances.
Helping Hands Korea is profiled extensively in Melanie Kirkpatrick’s much heralded account of the network of volunteers, many of them Christian activists, that has sought to fill the vacuum created by governments and well-funded international agencies that have chosen to ignore the plight of North Korean refugees in China. Ms. Kirkpatrick, a veteran journalist and deputy editor for the Wall Street Journal, has painstakingly etched a comprehensive picture of the modern equivalent of the US Civil War’s abolitionists’ volunteer network, the Underground Railroad, to guide slaves in the South to safe havens in the Northern states. 
In the past 15 years, a tiny community of activists has designed a similar grid to facilitate the safe evacuation of North Korean refugees through vast distances of China, which for the refugees is deeply hostile territory since Beijing’s authorities adamantly continue a calloused policy of forced repatriation of North Korean defectors if caught. Helping Hands Korea has decried Western governments’ ongoing craven compromise with Chinese authorities for commercial gain, choosing massive profits instead of confronting China over its consistently egregious violation as a UN Security Council Member of its own human rights obligations towards North Korean refugees on its soil.
To attend please RSVP to: jake.calvert@henryjacksonsociety.org
Former prisoner (from birth) of N.Korea's Camp 14 and only escapee
“……In fact, the regime may not survive much longer. “News is increasingly leaking into the North through short-wave radio broadcasts and illegal international phone calls,” explains Tim Peters, a Seoul-based pastor who helps North Koreans escape. “Coming from a society in which it is virtual suicide to speak out, brave defectors like Song and Shin do a great service to their countrymen.
“And disenchantment with the third generation of leadership in North Korea is on the rise. Refugees tell us that most people are fed up, but they also know that voicing such dissatisfaction can mean long-term imprisonment, if not worse.”
READ MORE:http://metronews.ca/news/world/229468/north-korea-finally-gets-a-real-voice/
CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti follows up her interview with Shin Dong-hyuk, about whom the new best-selling book Escape from Camp 14 was written, by interviewing Tim on the rampant trafficking of North Korean women in China and HHK’s care for their children after the trafficked women are forcibly repatriated to the DPRK by China. To hear the interview, click on ‘Listen’at the top of the CBC page in the Checking-In section.(Tim’s interview is between minutes 4:00 to 14:00 of The Current) http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2012/05/17/checking—in-5/
Reporting from Seoul: It’s well after dark and Tim Peters leans forward to tell a story about poverty and North Korea. He’s surrounded by a dozen people at a gathering with the cozy atmosphere of a community college night class, the students engrossed by a mentor’s tales. READ MORE about the Catacombs movement to help North Koreans.
South Korean pastor Suh Kyung-suk shouts toward the Chinese Embassy during a rally in support of North Korean refugees arrested by Chinese authorities in Seoul.
Seoul—Angry demonstrators staged a rally Tuesday near the Chinese Embassy here to protest China’s state security police for arresting dozens of North Korean defectors who face torture, imprisonment and even death if returned to their homeland.
TIME
Asia May 1st Edition features Helping Hands Korea in its
cover story "Long
Walk to Freedom".
