READ MORE: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/north-korean-defectors-jubilant-at-tyrant-kim-jong-ils-demise/story-e6frg6so-1226227081929

Read More:  

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/portrait-song-byeok-north-korean-propagandist-turned-protest-artist

Japan's Great Quake of 3.11.2011 registers on seismometer

Dramatic wreckage from Japan's 'Big One' of 3.11.2011

Please find hereafter a brief post-action report for“Operation Transporter” at Ishinomaki north of Sendai.

- Initiative: 1 Japanese Tetsu Kishaba, originally from Okinawa, owner of “Transporter Tokyo” , former member of the Japanese Self-Defence Force and the french Foreign Legion, tri-lingual J-E-F, and 2 French businessmen, long term residents of Tokyo, Jean Barthelemy (60), provider  of a large quantity of warm and comfortable Rossignol ski & outdoor gear, and Christophe Bosquillon (48) who just went on site at Ishinomaki north of Sendai tsunami area, together with Tetsu Kishaba.

- in addition, support by American relief specialist Tim Peters of Helping Hands Korea, and German emergency and relief doctor Norbert Vollertsen, together with a large network of Japanese and international friends, was instrumental in pulling this off.

- cargo: gasoline, heating fuel, blankets, Rossignol outdoor gear, other warm clothes, food supplies, water and juice, powder milk for children, medecine for cold, petfood for dogs (sorry cats), based on donation by Jean Barthelemy / Rossignol and private donations from the organizers and their friends, completed by purchasing of medecine, food and drink supplies, themselves under drastic rationing in Tokyo stores, including water and powder milk for children.

- action in situ: coastal agglomeration of Ishinomaki north of Sendai. Tetsu Kishiba early the previous week, right after the tsuami, had already made a recon by fire of the coast up to Sendai and some north, however proceeding through the coastal road which leads to the Fukushima nuclear plant. This route being difficult and requiring a large detour around Fukushima area, it was decided to proceed differently this time.

- departure Tokyo on Sunday(March 20th)  early afternoon, cargo completion in Chiba, then on through Tohoku Expressway, followed by Road No4, speeding through Fukushima-city which is located about 60km west from the nuclear plant, north of Fukushima prefecture, then Sendai in Miyagi prefecture, arrival Ishinomaki around 2am night sunday to monday, sleeping outdoor cold bearable and too late to disturb people at shelters.

- first observation on arrival and the next day by sunlight: compared with one week earlier,the japanese self-defence force SDF has done an outstanding job of cleaning up all arteries from tsunami debris, and repair it wherever required by earthquake cracks.

- second observation:people sleep in shelters , mostly schools, not outside in front of schools.

- rising at 6am, discussing with survivors in the neighborhood, departure at 7am, visiting 3 shelters / centers located in schools, managed by the local community, showing 3 different situations: 1 shelter only populated with senior citizens, satisfied to be well supplied by the SDF, 1 scarcely populated with only a few women and children, visibly shocked but laughing at times, and 1 bigger , more mixed, in the process of being checked by the Red Cross while we were there, and also offering supplies not only to its resident but to people able to return to their nearby barely standing homes, with one small cardbox of supplies for each. There was a brief outpour of emotion and thanks to us from several of them.

- visit to the CityHall and local authorities, very much focused on the tsunami impact map by districts, and the grueling effort of researching and reconnecting survivors through volunteers and a large number of hand-written registers containing messages to anyone else who might have survived or have an information. Some volunteers taking the pain to upload a picture of the missing on their cell phones, for just in case they recognize a face. Then also the city hall a bit under staffed and struggling to organize supplies distribution work and organize and manage the large number of volunteers available to  perform debris removal and cleaning once the SDF has performed the heavy lifting.

- visit to the logistic and dispatch center of the SDF, clearly the hub of all relief operations, with deployment of all helicopters, trucks, jeeps, and duty vehicles, and several hundred troops, on an extremely large area in elevation and thus not inundated. Professional and friendly welcome and guidance, and help in dispatching and organizing the goods per categories and priority lift. The food, water and medecine supplies were lifted as we brought them, and for clothes the turnover is a matter of 2-3 days max in line with the emergency.

- it was heartening to see a doctor for children coming very axious on site, and then relieved when he could immediately take out powder milk, other supplies for children, and some cold medecine, all in high demand. The children need all the help they can get, absolutely.

- we also found out that shelters at schools prefer to remain in the cold, rather than incurring any fire hazard by loading our 60 liter barrel of heating fuel or any other large fuel supply. Go figure.

- and the self defence force SDF would not at all handle heating fuel depots either … for obvious risk of explosion of massive proportion.

- however after the SDF logistics visit, we found a small community of non-sheltered survivors, by keeping driving north to the risk of not enough gazoline back to Tokyo, because we knew that somewhere, there was somebody who needed that heating fuel, and we just could not go back to Tokyo before we would find that person, and help one life.

-that community was centered around the boss of a local fishery who had evacuated his employee as soon as the earthquake struck, and save all their lives. But he remained behind and barely survived the tsunami 30mn later in then out of his car clinging to a metallic pole. He share that fate with the people of a Yanmar truck and boat engines service center. His mother is still missing, he lost everything including 1 billion yen (12 million US$) fishery equipment and goods value. His name is Masatoshi Chiba, and he is a good man. So we scavenged for empty jerrycans and we split the 60 liter baril in several 10  and 20 liters lots for him and his neighbors. Then we gave him all our food and water reserves planned for a longer trip, plus some. When the cold strikes again tomorrow, they will manage.

- on a general note, the food and water supplies are now reaching this area more or less well, but heating fuel remains a challenge, plus cold and other medecines, powder milk and supplies for children, also considering that many hospitals first 2 or 3 floors, have been flooded with equipment, medecine, and paper records of patients destroyed. This whole coastal area is flat with also some cuvette, hence not so many opportunities to build hospitals on altitudes higher than say 30 meters.

- so around Ishinomaki which was in really bad shape one week earlier, things are getting organized, but  the same or worse exercise has to be duplicated all the way north of Sendai.

- there is still a need to clean up many roads up north of Sendai, on the most devastated areas, and establish some mid size refueling depots, many of them rather than a few big ones where everyone queue for hours. Otherwise it is impossible to fully deploy on coastal area either from the south (Tokyo), the west (Niigata) or the north (Akita and Morioka).

- the problem of gasoline is an absolute priority to solve in order to be able to fully deploy within the coastal tsunami area.

- one of the center had directed us towards a local area (Hanto) further north and badly hit, and expressly requiring our cargo, but it was simply impossible to go there without remaining stuck in area without gas with no alternative way out.

Conclusion: 3 approaches completing each others seem to make sense: to supply the quite efficient SDF logistic and dispatch centers, to visit specific shelters centers (mostly schools) for specific needs including children, and also to pay attention to the non-sheltered survivors in the ruins of their factories and houses, to keep them in the loop of supplies. And anyone is free to visit the SDF dispatch and take supplies upon explaining their situations without too many complications and based on local trust. Tohoku people are modest and never complaining since to proud to admit they are in need. But they are.

NOTE TO NV: Norbert, this in particular implies the doctors, medecines and equipment. Doctors come on the SDF supply site with anxiety, happy if they get something, more anxious otherwise. There is a need to make sure the SDF supply machine is fine tuned to the needs of doctors, nurses, and these they served, starting with children. We understand Doctor Without Borders has started such an assessment with 10 teams for the entire region. But also there ae not enough doctors and nurses obviously for all levels of emergency.

Also, CityHalls and local authorities need to get organized to make full use of volunteers available for both distributions and debris clening.

The Japanese society got mobilized at all levels, and the SDF is doing a heckuva job in logistics and roads re-opening.

Also, transport companies Sagawa Kyubin and Tokyo Tsusho are providing hundreds of trucks to support the SDF and other logistics. However normal commercial speed service Takkyubin is not in a physical capacity to do that. But trucks are avaialble to pick up medical equipment anywhere in Japan if needed.

We will keep going there and encourage people to go there in the coming weeks to do their bit as the gasoline and transportation improve, but the winter is still there, and the scale of the problem will linger on weeks and months.

Finally, referring to Kobe January 1995 earthquake, and Banda Aceh January 2004 tsunami, the sheer geographic scale of the disaster this time makes it a couple of order of magnitude higher in the tackling, regardless of the nuke problem. But as Norbert remember, in Banda Aceh, it was a mess of bottlenecking and non coordination in the beginning, but at least there were both the Medan airport, and the Banda Aceh airport in good order including the military side, even after an helicopter crashed. However here, Sendai civilian airport was smashed, and is only re-opening now, with this time permission to be used by the SDF. This side of the logistics is crucial to quickly re-open the supply lines and chanelling goods and people.

Again thanks and kind regards,

Chris B.

Members of the Catacombs group gather last Tuesday in Yongsan, central Seoul, to discuss how to help North Koreans living in China. By Moon Gwang-lip

An 11-year-old North Korean boy living alone a half-demolished home in China was found nearly dead from food poisoning after eating food found in the garbage. His refugee mother was arrested by Chinese authorities and returned to North Korea, and his Chinese father has no contact with him.

So, watching the boy improve after months in a foster home in northeastern China brings great pleasure to humanitarian aid worker Tim Pieters.

“He was surprisingly spontaneous, even smiled at us,” said Pieters, a Christian activist and reverend based in Seoul, speaking of his recent visit to the foster home. “It’s natural. Nobody teaches him to smile.”

The boy, whose name was kept anonymous due to security reasons, is one of tens of thousands of North Korean children that human rights activists say are abandoned in China, a population Pieters counts as among the most vulnerable and disregarded in the world.

And foster homes clandestinely managed by humanitarian activists to dodge Chinese authorities are slowly gaining a foothold as safehouses for these children.

According to human rights groups, as many as 70 percent to 80 percent of North Korean female refugees in China are sold as sex slaves or forced to married Chinese men. They are paid $500 to $1,000 for such an arrangement, but they don’t do it just for money; they need Chinese men to protect them from being sent back to North Korea.

Most children born of North Korean women and Chinese men are denied access to many aspects of Chinese society, including legal residency in China, education and national health care, because their mothers are not legal residents and their fathers usually don’t take on parental responsibility.

Once their mothers are arrested and sent back to North Korea, the children’s lives worsen. About 25,000 North Korean children live such a life in China, Pieters said.

READ MORE: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2933107

By Tim Peters  /Christian Activist/Founder of Helping Hands Korea

A 10 year-old North Korean refugee boy hiding in China, made a sobering decision that was light years away from what most other elementary 4th graders are preoccupied with–a life-and-death gamble to cross the China-Mongolian border under the cover of darkness.

His name was Yoo Chul Min and his decision resulted in a heart-rending tragedy. Joining five other North Koreans, also desperate for even a fleeting glimpse of freedom, Chul Min and his companions became disoriented for 26 hours in the arid, desert-like conditions of the Mongolian frontier. Years of gradual malnutrition in North Korea had weakened Yoo Chul Min’s body and the normal reserve of endurance and resistance to the elements one would expect of a healthy preteen boy were sadly lacking. Yoo Chul Min died from exhaustion and exposure. His body was carried across the Mongolian border by the remaining refugee team when they finally gained their bearings.

Perhaps I’ve taken a particular interest in this story because it so happened that Chul Min and my paths crossed in the course of my work in Helping Hands Korea. I had met and was just begun getting to know this 10 year-old on two occasions, shortly before his death. At the time, he was under the protection of courageous Korean missionaries in the Yenbian (ethnic Chinese-Korean region) district of northeast China who had taken charge of the boy’s care in his father’s absence and were directing his activities as a refugee.

I remember noticing how withdrawn this boy was. Because he had lived in China for over a year, he did not immediately strike me as malnourished and his clothes were clean. I noticed with some amusement that he would never take off his baseball cap, even inside the house of my friend. My curiosity grew into a little personal challenge to spend some time with him and see if I could find a way to break through that shell of suspicion of foreigners and get a friendship started.

I was told by those caring for him that Chul Min was very studious and doing well in a Chinese elementary school. One day in June of this year, I happened to spot on the missionary’s bookshelf the Korean version of a book that I had read countless times with my own five children, in English, as they were growing up, The Picture Bible. Despite his initial reluctance to sit down next to a dreaded American, Chul Min’s curiosity about the book seemed to get the upper hand, and soon we were leafing through the wonderfully illustrated volume together and he was eagerly reading the Korean text aloud. It became the bridge for what I hoped would be a real friendship. Little did I realize at that time, that death was only a month away for my little newfound friend.

In the days that followed the jarring news of Chul Min’s sudden death, despite our urgent entreaties, the security officials in Mongolia did not agree to wait for Chul Min’s father, himself a recent arrival to the South from China, to arrive in Ulan Bator to identify his son’s body and to be present at his burial. (The following photo shows Chul Min’s father grieving, shortly after seeing his son’s grave on the barren Mongolian desert.)

Our grassroots organization, Helping Hands Korea (HHK) is determined to prevent the recurrence of this tragedy in the lives of other North Korean children. We have, since October of 1996, sought to relieve the suffering of the most needy and vulnerable North Koreans. This initiative has evolved into a two-pronged project:

(1) Assisting North Korean refugees, especially children and teenagers, in China and other ‘third countries’ to which they have fled. For one, HHK concentrates currently on providing foster care to “2^nd Wave Orphans” or stateless children, that is, the children of North Korean refugee women who have been “sold” into marriage to Chinese men, then forcibly repatriated to the North when their presence is discovered by Chinese police. These children, who may well number between 25,000 and 100,000 in China, typically do not have citizenship of either mother or father, therefore are effectively without nationality and access to public education or healthcare. The children are not sent back when their mothers are repatriated to North Korea, and the Chinese fathers are often incapable or unwilling to shoulder parental responsibilities.

(2) We continue to help support highly transparent humanitarian aid projects within hard-hit regions of North Korea itself, provided the deliveries of foodstuffs, medicine, etc. can be verified with accuracy.

(3) HHK provides logistical support to refugees who are at the greatest risk of severe punishment if they are forcibly returned to North Korea. They are assisted along the so-called “underground railroad” through China and across borders to adjacent countries, such as Mongolia, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand.

As another bitterly cold winter comes upon North Korea, we ask you to join us in our ongoing quest to prevent the loss of other precious lives like Yoo Chul Min.

(Little did we realize 8 years ago that Yoo Chul Min’s story would be the focus of feature-length film, CROSSING, which has helped to raise international awareness of the tragic plight of North Koreans within their country, and those who flee and become refugees in China. (December/2009)

I am a North Korean woman refugee in China. My name is Han Myong-suk (an alias) and I was born in 1975 in North Korea, making me 29 years old in 2005. My father was a military officer. I finished a 2 year-course commercial college in North Korea. I had been a factory worker for about 2 years when I defected to China for freedom and food in February 1998. On arrival in China, I was picked up by a Chinese gang of human traffickers and sold to a Chinese farmer in Heilungjang Province in China. I was at fifth month of pregnancy when I was arrested at home and repatriated to North Korea by the Chinese police in October in the same year (1998).
During detention in North Korea, I defied the order to abort the fetus the prison authorities contemptuously called a ‘Chinese chink’ and was badly beaten and kicked at my belly by a guard. His name is Hwang Myong-dong. My sister was with me at that time. Pain continued but I did not know that my unborn child was killed by his kicking. About a week later, I was taken to a clinic and in a most blunt manner, they extracted the dead child from my body. The physical injuries sustained at that time were such that I became very weak and I am no longer able to be pregnant again.
After the abortion when I was still bleeding, I was sent to a labor camp where I was subject to all kinds of degrading and inhumane hard labor. I was sentenced to serve 3-year prison term for reason of protest to the police when they killed my baby. In the prison, I was engaged in producing uniforms and boots for the North Korean policemen. When we walked in the vegetable farm of the prison, we did our best to steal some vegetable leaves and hide it in the clothes for eating them raw later. We struggled to pick up the remains of apples eaten and thrown by guards. The condition of the prison was such that I would have not survived the 3-year prison term if I were not released after one year and six months under a special amnesty. After one year in the prison, I was sent to a tuberculosis ward of another prison No. 20. where I saw dead prisoners almost daily.
I defected to China for the second time in March 2002 and am in hiding suffering from health problems from the injuries sustained in North Korea. My only hope today is to seek freedom outside China. Please help! (This woman was helped by HHK to a safe haven in a third country in December of 2005.)