American Enterprise Institute

March 30, 2006

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

1:45 p.m.	Registration
2:00	Welcome:	Michael Cromartie, USCIRF
		Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI
2:10	Keynote Speaker:	Jay Lefkowitz, Department of State
2:40	Panelists:	David Hawk, author of Thank You Father Kim Il Sung
		Sung-Yoon Lee, Harvard University Tom Malinowski, Human Rights Watch
4:00	Adjournment

Proceedings:

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Ladies and gentlemen, let me welcome you to American Enterprise Institute on this beautiful spring Washington afternoon.  It is a beautiful day here in Washington but less so in North Korea.  In fact, I think for millions and millions of people in North Korea, it is never a good day no matter what the weather is like outside.  The DPRK may constitute the world’s most acute permanent human rights crisis.  We have looked at many different aspects of that crisis from time to time but now with the appearance of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s important new report, “Thank You Father Kim Il Sung,” we might also talk about the issue of human rights and religious freedom in the DPRK. 

You are going to be treated to, I think, a very interesting and significant discussion this afternoon.  We have a number of eminent and knowledgeable authorities who are going to make presentations.  I would like to begin our afternoon with some remarks from the head of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, Michael Cromartie.  Thank you very much, Mike.

Michael Cromartie:  Thank you very much Nick.  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.  Ambassador Lefkowitz, distinguished guests, thank you for your interest and your presence here today.  I’m actually joined here today by the head of the U.S. Commission, Joe Crapa—I’m chairman of the commission—and by the commission staff that has worked very hard with David Hawk in the study.  But I’d also like to begin by thanking Nick Eberstadt for co-hosting this event.  It is an honor and a privilege to be here with Nick who is one of the country’s, and in fact, the world’s leading authority on North Korea. 

And it is a privilege to be here to highlight this new study, “Thank You Father Kim Il Sung: Eyewitnesses Accounts to Severe Violations of the Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion in North Korea.”  I assume all of you have a copy and if you do not, we have extras.  The Commission has been seriously engaged in North Korean issues since its inception, both in detailing conditions there and by representing diplomatic and policy advice to Congress and to the executive branch. 

Over the past decade, as many of you know, the international community has been growing all too accustomed to stories of government excesses and horror coming from North Korea.  North Koreans live in a closed totalitarian society which permits no dissent and strictly curtails freedoms of speech, press, religion and assembly, and even the basic human right to food is wielded as a political tool by the North Korean government.  In early 1990s, the failing economic system led to famine in which more than an estimated two million people died of starvation.  

And the regime also maintains a brutal system of prison camps that housed an estimated 200,000 political inmates who are subject to slave labor, torture and execution.  We have learned of the political and human rights abuses in North Korea through the testimony of North Korean defectors, courageous individuals who migrate to China and eventually find their way to South Korea.  And defector testimonies serve as a basis for David Hawk’s previous study on the vast Gulag system in North Korea.  That book was called Hidden Gulag. 

The evidence provided by David’s study quieted those who believe that claims for a massive Gulag system were, in fact, exaggerated or are only anti-North Korean propaganda.  His book proved otherwise.  In addition, defectors have provided great details of North Korea’s policies that led to mass starvation, the arbitrary detention of dissidents extending to three or four generations of their families, forced abortions, conditions in China for migrants, and the penalties imposed on North Koreans who repatriated from China. 

Now in assessing the information about the freedom of thought, conscience and religion in North Korea, the Commission believed that it was very important for the defector testimony to be heard, to understand better what really is going on in North Korea, to understand better the knowledge of religious life and religious freedom, and conditions in the government’s policies governing the religion and belief in North Korea.  So that is why we commissioned David Hawk to prepare this study. 

We believe the study shows how successive North Korean governments have suppressed North Korea’s once very vital religious and intellectual life, and the study describes also the establishment in forceful imposition of quasi-religious call to personality centered on Kim Il Sung and his son and the survival of the very limited religious activity in North Korea.  The study allows the voices of North Korean defectors to speak about the conditions in North Korea and gives anecdotal evidence on what they are experiencing there.  “Thank You, Father Kim Il Sung” offers compelling evidence of the systematic destruction of religious life in North Korea and of the ongoing severe abuses of religious freedom there. 

I will let David talk more specifically about the study, its findings and its insights, but I want to close my remarks by trying to put the study in some larger political context.  It is the Commission’s position that the severe violations of thought, conscience, and religion documented in this book should not be considered apart from the other human rights and security concerns that had dominated international attention on North Korea.  The study confirms that human rights and humanitarian disasters perpetuated by this regime threaten security on the Korean peninsula. 

With or without nuclear weapons, North Korea is a security threat.  The same mistrust and the same paranoia over maintaining control of the drive to develop nuclear weapons also drives the regime to perpetuate egregious human rights violations, to maintain a huge conventional military force, and to force migrations of hundreds of thousands of people to China.  Without pressure from the international community, the North Korean regime will not alter its actions, whether proliferating weapons or abusing its citizens.  So the United States must insist that North Korea meet certain basic human rights needs and concerns, especially as Washington prepares to consider a number of options, including economic assistance for when North Korea first halts its nuclear programs.  Negotiations to end nuclear proliferation should include issues such as family reunification, abductions, need-based food distribution, durable solutions for refugees, as well as market and legal reforms and economic development. 

It has been the Commission’s position that pursuing both nuclear and human security is not mutually exclusive.  The two need to be linked in any meaningful security arrangement that emerges from the Six-Party Talks.  Examples of dual track diplomacy can be found in both U.S.-Soviet, and U.S.-Chinese relations, and the Helsinki Accord also comes to mind. 

In conclusion, among many other important divisions, the North Korean Human Rights Act, the same act that brought the Ambassador here today, calls for the establishment of a regional framework for discussing and promoting human rights in North Korea.  The Commission views such a framework as an idea worthy of further discussion and action.  In short, we think that “Thank You, Father Kim Il Sung” offers some insights into the daily lives of North Koreans and raises international awareness about the appalling human rights situation faced by North Koreans in their own country and now even also in China.  I look forward to our conversation. 

Thank you.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Thank you very much.  It is now my pleasure to welcome Ambassador Jay Lefkowitz, the President’s special envoy on human rights in North Korea.  Despite his deceptive youth, Ambassador Lefkowitz has a distinguished career in both the public sector in several different administrations and in the private sector as well.  Ambassador Lefkowitz can spare us half an hour, and I think that he will have some remarks of his own and then he will take questions.  You can certainly take questions yourself, Jay.  Always a friend of freedom and a champion of freedom, Jay, welcome to AEI.

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  Thank you very much for that introduction, Nick, and I want to thank the American Enterprise Institute for organizing the event and inviting me back.  As I came up on the elevator, I recalled that in 1993 for about nine months, I had the great pleasure of working here at AEI, and it was a remarkable place for those of you who do not know AEI.  Every day, I’d take my bag lunch, and I’d go into a little conference room and I would sit, and I would look up and Irving Kristol or Bob Bork or Lynne Cheney and certainly Nick Eberstadt, and a whole variety of other wonderful scholars would be sitting having lunch.  And I felt that I was finally getting what I should have gotten out of graduate school many years earlier. 

Since President Bush appointed me special envoy last year, I have found Nick to be an absolutely indispensable source of information, insight, and occasionally criticism. I really appreciate Nick’s friendship and all of his support.  I also want to acknowledge Michael Cromartie, Sung-Yoon Lee and Tom Malinowski, and especially David Hawk who has written what I think is an absolutely indispensable work about life in North Korea today. 

If you only have time to read one piece of work about North Korea, read David’s work.  It is frightening, it is chilling, and it is true.  And it is really the impetus for why two years ago, the United States Congress, building on the work of a lot of important NGOs in the United States and with the support of this Administration, passed the North Korea Human Rights Act, which is the statute under which I am now serving the President.  There is a direct link between the prevalence of freedom in the world and the prospects for security and peace.  President Bush articulated this idea—which has a long heritage in America’s view of the world—very clearly in his second inaugural address. 

On that January morning last year, he recommitted the United States to the general relational struggle to end tyranny and he noted, “When you stand for liberty, we will stand with you.”  He said that not just for the audience in front of them. He said that principally to people around the world who are, in fact, struggling being deprived of freedom.  And there is no group of people right now who are being deprived of freedom any more than the North Korean people. 

Our job, our mission is to help one of the world’s most oppressed people secure recognition for their inalienable rights including, ultimately, their right to government by their own consent.  The other concerns that we have and that our allies have with North Korea, the counterfeiting of our currency, the smuggling of drugs, the proliferation of weapons, the effort to build a nuclear arsenal and to threaten their neighbors with war.  Those are not nearly coincidental to the human rights issue; rather, they are the predictable conduct of the government that possesses no apparent respect for the rights of its own citizens. 

The link between government oppression and challenges to international security is well articulated by a great freedom fighter, someone on whose behalf of freedom I worked for many years when I was younger and who I now count as a good friend, Natan Sharansky.  He languished for nine years in a Soviet prison based on trumped-up charges before ultimately, pressure from the international community secured his release.  And he said, “Non-democratic regimes imperil the security of the world.  They stay in power by controlling their populations.  And while the mechanics of democracy makes democracies inherently peaceful, the mechanics of tyranny make non-democracies inherently belligerent.” 

Our objective, our goal with respect to North Korea is not so much democracy as simply lifting the veil, creating an opportunity for the people of North Korea to thrive, to achieve what their relatives—only a hundred miles away—who themselves in South Korea lived under repression by an autocratic regime less than 20 years ago, and have now been able to build the 12th largest economy in the world in an incredibly vibrant democracy—an economy of over a trillion dollars.  Now I believe that North Korea will ultimately follow the same type of transformation that we saw during the 1980s and early ‘90s with the fall of the Iron Curtain.  And I believe that the impetus for the North Korean government to open up and respect the rights of their citizens will grow stronger in the time ahead, but only if there is concerted international pressure, and only if the countries in Asia who have the most influence with North Korea step up to the plate and join this international community. 

The President is proud to be a participant and to commit U.S. energy and capital and resources to this effort, but we know in the United States that we cannot on our own bring this about.  We require an international coalition.  We require cooperation from the United Nations, the European community, many of whose members have direct relations, diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, have to be engaged in this process.  And most of all, we have to engage in this process without fear that a little bit of criticism will set us back.  On the contrary, when we speak the truth about freedom and liberty, the truth resonates. 

Now what are my principal objectives as the special envoy?  It seems to me that a key way to empower the North Korean people is to force a ray of light through the veil that Kim Il Sung has drawn over North Korea.  The propaganda that he uses to suppress his people can be countered only by information about the outside world and information about what is actually going on inside North Korea.  This can be achieved through enhanced radio broadcasting and other means to disseminate the type of news and information that the rest of the world takes for granted but which is hidden from the people of North Korea.  Most North Koreans cannot travel even domestically.  All broadcasting is controlled by the government.  Radios come fixed to a single state channel for propaganda. 

And yet in recent years, there have been some hopeful signs.  A survey of defectors suggests that about a third of all North Koreans have now modified their radios, and that half of all the people know somebody who has.  That creates an opportunity source; it creates an opportunity to ramp up the kind of broadcasting that we have the capability of doing. 

The National Endowment for Democracy has taken the initiative in this area by funding a pilot program to train North Korean defectors and South Korean democracy activists in journalistic and broadcasting standards, and then supporting the broadcasting cost so that they can go on the air for a period of time each day to transmit information into North Korea.   We support this information.  Just this morning, I met with the Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors to talk about increasing the quality and the quantity of information, the transmission quality and the sheer quantity of information transmitted into North Korea by Radio Free Asia and Voice of America. 

And why?  Because when we talk to the defectors, they tell us that one of the most important things sustaining them in North Korea was the ability to have some link with the outside world.  And with information, more North Korean people will learn that just to the south, there is a vibrant democracy, a strong economy with freedom.  They will learn that they do not live in a socialist paradise.  They will learn that right now their lives are shorter on average, infant mortality is more than three times their neighbors to the South and that because of the terrible policies of food deprivation directed by the government of North Korea, the average North Korean male is now several inches shorter than his South Korean brother.  More information from the outside world will also assist North Koreans who worship God in defiance of the State.  David Hawk will speak far more eloquently about this than I can, given the excellent report he has prepared. 

But I will simply note that North Korea spares no effort in suppressing religion.  Faith empowers the individual.  It creates an alternate structure, a higher moral authority than the despotic ruler.  It might, in fact, lead one to question the cult of personality that has come to become the government of North Korea.  Indeed, it is a cult reminiscent of those that surrounded Stalin and Mao.  It is taken very seriously by this regime, and as David reports, every North Korean is expected to attend one or more of an estimated 450,000 Kim Il Sung revolutionary research centers at least once a week for instruction.  Yet despite all of these, again, we are seeing some signs of a ray of light, some signs that underground expressions of faith are taking hold. 

Another key objective on my brief is to make clear that we need to do more—and we can and will do more—for the North Korean refugees.  Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have fled North Korea since the mid 1990s.  Most refugees are in China, and although the numbers vary wildly by the different groups that have tried to do some fact finding in the region, there is no question that they are neglected.  They are not treated humanely and indeed, just recently, a defenseless North Korean woman who braved the border crossing and reached China and sought refuge at a school in Beijing was sent back to her tormentors in North Korea.  This happened despite the pleas to the government and the United Nations. 

We will press to make it clear to our friends and allies in the region that we want to accept North Korean refugees.  The United States has a wonderful tradition of being a refuge to vulnerable people seeking refuge from despotic regimes and we will do our part.  But the United States is never going to be the solution for most North Korean refugees.  Quite properly, they will want to be reunited with families, with their culture in South Korea.  South Korea makes it clear that they are all, in fact, citizens and we need to press other countries—in particular the Chinese government, which is violating and ignoring its international obligations under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol by refusing to protect the North Korean on its soil or recognizing them as refugees, and by severely impeding the United Nations and its High Commissioner for Refugees from doing its job. 

These are steps that we can do to help the North Korean people but there are also policies that we need to avoid.  Unfortunately, some of the nations in Asia today may, unwittingly, be doing more to help continue the conditions in North Korea than to bring about a change.  One example of well-intentioned but perhaps counter-productive assistance is in the area of unrestricted humanitarian aid.  The United States is very proud of the humanitarian aid that we have given to North Korea over the last decade to try to help alleviate the conditions of suffering and deprivation by famine.  But we have always insisted that the humanitarian aid we provide comes with monitoring to make sure that it is not sold in the black market or used for the military. 

Our objective with humanitarian aid is that it serves humanitarian purposes.  But when countries provide unrestricted humanitarian aid without proper monitoring, they are not necessarily helping the situation.  And I think it is very important, particularly at a moment in time when the North Korean government has basically kicked out for all intents and purposes the World Food Programme, that we make clear and we call on countries to provide productive humanitarian aid to help people with food or health care, but to do it in a way that we can insure an international community that it serves the humanitarian objective. 

Another example of well intentioned assistance that we frankly do not know enough about, and so I would say the jury is simply out right now, has to do with some of the joint economic ventures near Kaesong, a city north of the DMZ where you can literally look out from the border and see where 15,000 South Korean companies have invested hundreds of million of dollars into an economic facility where South Korean goods will be manufactured and ultimately sold using North Korean labor.  The South Korean official has enthusiastically described this as a cooperative project benefiting both the South and the North, a peace project overcoming the wall of the Cold War through economic cooperation.  It may some day turn out to be that way, and indeed I have no doubt that it may be much better to be a North Korean worker in Kaesong today than anywhere else in North Korea.  But the real question for the international community is, should we be imposing and insisting on fair treatment for the workers for goods and served goods that are going to be sold internationally? 

What we know about what goes on in Kaesong certainly in light of North Korea’s track record, I think creates a presumption, maybe a rebuttal presumption, but a presumption of concern.  The companies apparently pay less than two dollars a day per worker, and there is no guarantee that the workers receive this small amount because the North Korean government deducts a social fee from their wages and empowers labor brokers to control the rest.  The site is fenced in, workers come and go through a single entrance manned by armed soldiers and, of course, the South Korean government does not have the ability to enforce its own good labor laws in Kaesong. 

I would submit that at a minimum, North Korea should allow an independent party such as the International Labor Organization to inspect and assess Kaesong and report its findings to the U.N.  There are hopeful signs in terms of building international support.  The United Nations passed a resolution at the third committee last year.  Not all of the countries that should have joined that resolution did, but many, in fact, did and I think there will be more this fall if we have another resolution. 

The Japanese government has taken the important step of appointing its own ambassador for human rights.  The Japanese have a particular set of concerns because of their close proximity to North Korea from a security perspective because of the terrible, terrible human rights violations of Japanese families being abducted by North Korean agents. But I’m pleased to say that the Japanese government is focusing in its effort on North Korean human rights more broadly than just its own parochial interests.  It is joining in the international community’s concern and fight for North Korean human rights for the people of North Korea.  And I certainly hope that the European community will follow suit and appoint its own special envoy for human rights. 

When I was in Seoul in December, it became clear to me that there are many people in South Korea who cared deeply about their brethren in the North.  We need to energize people like these at home.  We need to energize the Korean-American community so they can do for this struggle what the American-Jewish community did in the 1970s and ‘80s in the fight for freedom for self-determination.  The United States will work with other democracies toward the day when North Koreans are free.  We will strive to give them hope and to help them assert their inalienable rights.  As President Bush said when he was in Kyoto in November, “We will not forget the people of North Korea.  The 21st century will be freedom’s century for all Koreans.” 

But this is not a challenge for the United States alone, and I dare say that it is not a challenge that the United States can achieve on its own.  So we need the cooperation of the Europeans, we need the cooperation of the Asian countries, we need the cooperation of the South Koreans and the Chinese government.  And if we are successful, we will help bring about a peaceful and productive peninsula for all Koreans.  Thank you. 

I’m happy to take a few questions that people have.  Please.

Questioner:  (Inaudible, speaks without a microphone.)

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  I do not know that there is an official State Department position on reunification.  Obviously, I think it is in everybody’s long term interest to see a unified, peaceful, productive peninsula.  How is that for an alliteration of the topic?  But I think there are an awful lot of obstacles right now.  We are trying to make as much progress as we can through the Six-Party discussions on the nuclear issue. 

But fundamentally, the real threshold test for North Korea in terms of international acceptance and legitimacy will be its conduct in human rights.  Henry Jackson, Scoop Jackson, said it more clearly than anyone else I guess 30 years ago now, when he made clear that the best way to understand how much a country can be trusted in international affairs is by looking at how that country treats its own population.  Yes, sir. 

Questioner:  This morning, Dr. Carl Muller from Open Doors International claims that there are 40,000 Christians in labor camps or in other incarceration.  Are you comfortable with this number, 40,000?

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  I wish I could tell you that I’m comfortable with any particular number.  I think, given the lack of international inspections, the fact that the Red Cross obviously has been afforded no access, and the special rapporteur for the United Nations is not even being given access, I do not think we really know what the numbers are.  We know that there are thousands, very likely hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in the North Korean gulag and obviously many of them are there because of direct religious persecution, but I do not know that I can give you a precise number. 

Paul Eckert:  I’m Paul Eckert from Reuters News Agency.  Can you bring us up to date on the efforts and the policy towards bringing North Korean refugees to the United States under the Act?  So tell us what the hurdles are, any timeline you might have to share?

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  I think we have had a series of hurdles, both domestically and internationally.  I think we have been able to resolve the domestic hurdles.  There are obviously legitimate questions about security and the security risk of potential refugees from North Korea.  Certainly, it is a concern of the South Korean government that the North Koreans basically send agents out to try to become refugees.  I think we have resolved internally, and I think we are certainly prepared to accept North Korean refugees.  We have also had challenges and hurdles to overcome in the region because, obviously, we need to respect the sovereignty of the countries in the region.  But I think we have got a lot of friends and allies in the region who want to cooperate and recognize that this is something the United States is really committed to. 

In terms of the timeline, I cannot speak to a particular timeline.  It is not something that I can just press a button and make sure we have a refugee here at the next AEI event, but I am hopeful and really confident that we are at a turning point now in our ability to bring North Korean refugees here if they are legitimate refugees, have legitimate concerns, and if the United States is an appropriate place for them. 

Jae Ku:  Jae Ku, Freedom House.  You said it today and you have said it in the past that maybe the European Union or the European community in general, that you hope they will appoint a special envoy themselves.  Freedom House recently had at the Third International Conference in Brussels, and from my conversation with the NGO of community there as well as our limited contacts with European officials, that this is not on their radar screen.  And I’m wondering if there are things that you are doing behind the scenes that you could share with us that would lead us to believe that maybe this is an option… something that the European Union or the parliament could do in the near future?

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  If there were things I was doing behind the scenes, and I shared them with you, they would not be behind the scenes anymore.  So I will not share those with you, but I will tell you that I have actually had very encouraging discussions, in particular I think there is a great deal of support in Eastern Europe.  Some of the former Soviet bloc countries really understand what the cost—the human cost as well as the economic and political cost—of the regime like North Korea is.  I think this is an area where the United States and France can cooperate in a very productive way.  So I’m hopeful that the European community will move ahead and be more focused on this issue in the coming month. 

Thean Gung:  Thean Gung with the Saga Times.  According to the Immigration Reform Bill passed at the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, most Koreans who can provide to some useful information about the WMD program or counterfeit issue can get an S2 visa to stay and live in this country.  Do you think the Administration is ready to accept North Koreans?

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  I think the United States is prepared to accept North Korean refugees.  It is really one of the hallmarks of our society that we have made our shores available to people seeking refuge.  Many of us, I dare say, in this room descend from people who came here as immigrants.  And certainly, people fearing prosecution, I think, are prime candidates to accept as refugees, and I hope in the near future we will be in position to do something. 

Mark Jarvis:  Mark Jarvis, Emerging Markets Management.  You mentioned Kaesong.  Has the United States government formulated the policy on how it would treat goods manufactured in Kaesong?

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  I do not know that we have said anything publicly about that issue, and obviously there were discussions ongoing as we negotiate a free trade agreement, but I think there are certainly very significant questions that need to be answered about the entire operation in Kaesong. 

Chenogang:  Chenogang from Chogang Daily.  Only this month, Ms. Condoleezza Rice said, “I’ll give more jobs to Mr. Jay Lefkowitz.” But even after that, you have been relatively silent.  But now today, you present yourself in two consecutive meetings and making your position public in a very clear way.  So can we guess it is time for you to gear up to break silence and just go forward for your own campaign?

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  I guess I take a little bit of issue with your premise because having spent a number of years in government, I think it is important to do work both inside and outside and obviously, there is an awful lot of work that needs to be done inside planting the appropriate seeds, plowing the appropriate ground—I do not want to kill that metaphor—but there is an awful lot of work that needs to be done within the United States government and within the international community.  There is also an appropriate time and an appropriate place for public speeches, for dialogue, for negotiation.  I do not try to plot what I do on a daily or on a weekly graph but I have been engaged fully in the issue and will continue to be engaged fully in the issue.  Yes, ma’am.

Questioner:  Yana News Agency.  You have been emphasizing a lot about getting the Asian region to cooperate in U.S. efforts to bring in refugees.  Would that include the establishment of sort of a center somewhere in Asia to check, as a checkpoint maybe, to process the North Korea refugees?  Because I would think that you cannot just pluck them out from somewhere in China and bring them directly to the U.S. Really some kind of midpoint, checkpoint.

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  Without getting into too many details about various discussions and issues that we are focusing on, obviously one of the challenges is finding appropriate places to screen and process and assess a potential refugee to the United States, but I think we are making a great deal of progress in that area.  And so I think it is going to facilitate our ability to take some refugees.  Yes, ma’am.

Emma Chanlett:  Emma Chanlett at the Congressional Research Service.  Can you clarify at what level and how recently U.S. officials have pressed their Chinese counterparts on honoring international obligations in terms of their treatment of refugees?

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  I do not know that I could tell you as I stand here when the last direct bilateral communication of that nature has been.  So in direct answer to your question, I guess I do not know.  I certainly, just 10 minutes ago, in a public forum made very clear our view on the issue but I do not know when there has been the last direct bilateral.  Yes, sir?

Foster Klug:  Foster Klug with the Associated Press.  You mentioned unhelpful actions by neighbors of North Korea.  Is South Korea doing enough to confront human rights violations in North Korea? 

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  It is a very good question and it is a question that I think can certainly be discussed with our panel later on.  I had, when I was in South Korea, some very good productive discussions with members of the South Korean government.  I think certainly the people who are in the government in South Korea now know frankly far better than most of us here what it means to live under an autocratic regime.  They understand the blessing of freedom.  They understand the blessing of democracy in free markets.  They also have direct concerns given the close proximity of the North Korean military to their population centers. 

I would be the first to say that I’m not sure that from a tactical approach, they are doing everything that I would be recommending to them.  I think their overall long-term objective which is a united, free and peaceful and productive peninsula, is the same as ours, but I think it is important for the South Korean government to listen carefully to the people in South Korea who I heard from when I was there, who have made it very clear that human rights issues are a significant concern and should be very much front-and-center on the agenda in that country. 

Sin U Nam:  Sin U Nam from North Korea Freedom Coalition.  Maybe this is a follow up question, and also this may be an off-mark question but the work on this has gone on for over five years now and in my opinion—and I told you so through a letter and at the meeting I went to with you—the key problem is South Korea because they are doing everything against the human rights issue. 

For example, everyone who is here, they abstained or stood away from the UN resolution on North Korea human rights issue.  As of two days ago, they said they are sending $20 million to the WHO.   Even North Korean Free Radio, they have been doing nothing but harassing them and short of closing the station.  They have been making it very difficult for the defectors.  They have a policy of not accepting their own refugees, their own citizens into South Korea.  And I know you asked for meetings with top level government officials over there. Those meetings did not happen when you were there. 

Do you have or the State Department, do they have any kind of a contingency policy in case South Korea—who is entirely the opposite direction—decides to keep feeding the money to the dictator, keep feeding the military and even on the human rights issue.  Everything is a human rights issue.  I can number thousands of human rights violations.  But even your own story being played right now in South Korea, nobody attends from the government, nobody attends from the majority party.  So do you have a contingency plan in case you cannot work with the South Korean government, work alone or put them in line or something?

Amb. Jay Lefkowitz:  At this point I think that we are working with the South Korean government.  Again, there may be somewhat different tactical approaches but I think we are working with them, and I think fundamentally the people of South Korea are the most important group with respect to helping to bring about change in North Korea.  They have direct relationships.  They are united by a common culture, a common land mass and indeed many, many, many South Koreans have first degree relatives in North Korea. 

My sense from having visited South Korea is that there is a strong degree of support.  Indeed, I would imagine that there would be very strong support from the South Korean population for their government to join in the resolution at the United Nations this fall.  And so I’m confident that working together with the South Koreans, we can bring about the kind of opening that we need.  Thank you very much.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Ambassador, thank you very much for joining us this afternoon.  We very much appreciate your presence and your insights.  Ladies and gents, we have about 75 minutes left for the remainder of our session, and what we will do in the remaining time I think is to begin with a discussion by David Hawk, the author of the report and also author of another illuminating earlier study on the Hidden Gulag for the U.S. Committee on Human Rights in North Korea. 

David, I propose that maybe you speak for 20 minutes about your report, and that we follow up with comments and discussion from our two discussants.  David’s report raises, I think, some profound and actually really quite terrible questions for the international community and also, of course, for North Korea’s neighbors and compatriots in South Korea.  We have Professor Sung-yoon here from Fletcher and now from Harvard University and Tom Malinowski of the Washington Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch.  Yoon and Tom, I suggest maybe you try to keep to maybe 10 minutes of comments afterwards and then maybe we will have about half an hour for more open general discussion.  David and Yoon and Tom, you can either come up here or you can set up a chair, whichever place you are more comfortable in making your presentation.

David Hawk:  I’m more comfortable sitting right here.  Looking at the audience I suspect there are many people facing me who know more about Korea than I do.  But nonetheless, I have written these two reports and I would like to discuss the second one, “Thank You, Father Kim Il Sung” this afternoon.  In 2000, the DPRK formally, officially reported to the U.N. Human Rights Committee that there was freedom of religion in North Korea, that this article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its equivalent article in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights setting forth freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief was being observed and respected in North Korea. 

The U.N. Human Rights Committee members doubted that this was so but there was not, as of five years ago and 2005, enough information about the situation of freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief for the U.N. Human Rights Committee to make any definitive conclusions or recommendations as to what ought to be done.  So this was an area in which there was a need in the international community for further information on as to what the situation is, and I was privileged that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom asked me to investigate, to prepare a report on this.  And this was done on the basis of interviewing, with the help of my South Korean human rights colleagues, 40 North Koreans. 

And I just want to pause to say that the North Koreans who are now residents in South Korea are an enormous resource that I hope the international human rights community, and I hope the human rights community in South Korea will make increasing use of.  There had always been in the Cold War a handful of defectors from North Korea to South Korea, but these were high level. These were diplomats who were posted abroad, or high level party, or high level military officials who had the ability to travel abroad and the occasion to defect.

 The kinds of people who have been coming to South Korea from North Korea in the last five years are of entirely this category.  These are people who, from the mid 1990s on, fled to China in search of food or looking for employment to be able to send money to feed their family back in North Korea.  A smaller proportion of these had run afoul of the North Korean authorities, perhaps because they went to China the first time or got caught, repatriated, and punished and thereafter figured that they had no future in North Korea and, subsequently, when they re-fled to China had the idea to go to South Korea.

But there are now, as many of you know, some 7,000 North Koreans who are residing in South Korea and are accessible to journalists, to scholars, and human rights investigators such as myself.  And these are normal, these are regular people who are a source of a wealth of information, and it is my hope that basically, the human rights NGOs in South Korea can sort of take the articles, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article by article and interview the North Korean defectors now in South Korea so that we can fill in what had been the enormous gap of information about the details of the situation in North Korea. 

Not that people think that it was ever a worker’s paradise but there if you look at, if you go back 30 years to the annual reports of Amnesty International or 20 years from the annual reports of Human Rights Watch and you look up DPRK, mostly it says, “We have no information.”  At the times in the ‘80s when there were hundreds of pages of information available about repression in South Korea, you had a paragraph or a couple of paragraphs or couple of sentences about North Korea.  And it is only within the last five years that it has been possible to redress this absence of knowledge, one of the few places in the world where the international human rights NGO community and the governments had involved themselves with this had relatively little information. 

So for this report, 40 North Koreans were interviewed and the first question to the interview was, “Is there religious freedom in North Korea?”  The North Koreans and South Koreans would have encountered religious freedom or something very close to it in these areas of China to which they fled when there was a large ethnic Korean community.  And they certainly saw religious freedom when they arrived in South Korea so they knew what it is.  

And the first question was, “In your experience and perspective, is there freedom of thought, conscience and religion in North Korea?”  They all said, “No.”  Some thought it was a really dumb question, but the follow up question is “Why would you say that?”  Explain your answer why do you think there is.  In other words, in terms of methodology, what we tried to do is not ask leading questions, give any indication of what sorts of answers we were looking for.  So we did not ask the interviewees to tell us about religious repression or tell us what you know about this. 

We would ask them, have they ever met or seen any religious observance going on?  Have they ever met or seen a Buddhist monk, a Protestant pastor, a Catholic priest, a Chandok church leader and they all answered, “No.”  And two answered, “Well, I never met any but I saw some religious believers being executed.”  And when I first read this in the English translations, I found that very interesting.  I said I would like to go back and re-interview that person who happened to respond, no, they never met but they saw them because they saw people—these happened to be Protestant Christian cases—where people were being publicly executed in the 1990s for having been caught with Bibles.

 Another series of questions followed about whether or not, what did people know, how did they know about religion at all, and they described the anti-religious propaganda they had been subjected to starting in middle school and in the North Korean media.  And they also described what the North Koreans called the soul or the monolithic ideology system, popularly known as juche referred to more often by the North Koreans as “Kim Il Sungism”, and how this was propagated, and how they were educated into “Kim Il Sungism” as basically, it is a system of thought with a lot of religious overtones.  In any event, this information is described in the report which has been available online and there are new, hard copies for those of you my age who prefer to read a hundred pages in hard copy rather than on a computer screen.  The bulk of the report is the answers of the North Koreans who were interviewed, and the best thing is to allow the North Koreans to speak for themselves in terms of their experiences and their perspectives. 

Let me try to give a real thumbnail sketch because we also wanted to piece together the current situation by talking to South Koreans and other religionists who have contact with the official religions that were reconstituted little bit in the ‘70s, and around 1988 when Pyongyang wanted to host an Arirang Festival to compete with Seoul’s Olympics, and they expected a lot of foreign visitors.  At the outset of the regime, if you look at the world religions, Buddhism was very weak and Roman Catholicism was very weak in the northern part of the Korean peninsula because basically, Buddhism and Catholic Christianity had been suppressed by the dynasty neo-Confucianists. 

But then as the dynasty became very weak and indigenous, a religious movement called Tunghak, later renamed Chondokyo and Protestant Christian missionaries became very popular in the northern part of the Korean peninsula.  At the time when the Soviets installed Kim Il Sung in power, there was no communist party in Korea but the Protestants and the Chondokyoists were very strong and very well organized in the northern part of the peninsula, and both of these religions had ideas of a social and political ethics that how they wanted to see Korea, now free from Japanese occupation, develop. 

So the first communist project in North Korea was not different really from what took place under Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe and the people’s democracy stages, where religious observance was not prohibited or outlawed but religious political parties in both the Christians and the Chondokyoists had political parties that were rivals, were suppressed politically, which is what set off the initial migrations of Protestant clergy and Protestant laymen from the north to the south.  It was after the Korean War in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s that the Kim Il Sung regime moved to abolish Christianity entirely and all religions entirely, so that at the same time they undertook the strange sorts of political behavior that has been identified as the Korean variant of Stalinism. 

This was one part of it, which was to end all the religious practice so at that time North Korea became, along with Albania, I believe, the only two countries in the world in which there was no public religious activity or observance whatsoever.  At the time of the détente, when Nixon had struck a deal with the Chairman Mao and Chou En-lai and was pursuing détente with the Soviet Union, the North Koreans figured they needed to reorient their foreign policy approach since both of their communist supporters were now making friends with the United States.  So, they started to revive government controlled religious federations so that these religious federations could have outreached into potentially sympathetic communities in South Korea, in Europe and in North America, a projection which continued. 

And then at the time of the time Seoul Olympics in ’88, when the North Koreans wanted to sponsor a competing event, they were fearful that if they brought in foreigners, they would notice that there are no Buddhist temples or Christian churches at all, so they set up three of them.  They set up a Protestant church, Catholic church, and a Buddhist temple in Seoul and allowed people they had identified to the former religious affiliations of the entire population as part of their Sung Bun classification system.  But they allowed a handful—and we are talking about several hundred people who were Catholics prior to World War II, during the Japanese occupation or the children of Catholics and the people who were children of Protestants from the old pre-liberated society and people who were Chondokyoist also from that are—allowed several hundred of them to have a public worship service together under extremely limited and police observed circumstances, so that you could have the religious federations capable of having outreach to progressive religionists in South Korea, Europe and North America. 

And it is the existence of three, now four churches they have created, built most recently a Russian orthodox church in Pyongyang.  But it is on the basis of several hundred people being allowed to pray and sing hymns together in Pyongyang that the regime contends that they have religious freedom.  But of course, if you look at the standards and set forth in the U.N. conventions and declarations and what religious freedom and liberty actually entails, you can see that the extremely limited and controlled and circumscribed activity in no way meets the international standards for religious freedom in North Korea today.  This is all described in more detail in the report along with the substitute system “Kim Il Sungism” that was created as the substitute for the previous historic religions in the northern part of the Korean peninsula. 

For the moment, it is not possible to affect the situation there directly.  But in my opinion, the “Kim Il Sungism” system broke down, the economy all but collapsed in the 1990s, the public distribution system collapsed and I think what the North Koreans call the monolithic ideology system took a big hit by many accounts of the North Korean defectors.  While Kim Il Sung is still highly regarded, his son, Kim Jong Il is not. And the sole ideology or monolithic ideology system does not have the hold on people’s mind that it once did because of the famine, and the natural phenomena leads people to believe that the mandate of heaven is no longer enjoyed by the regime. 

The police state has also broken down a little bit.  It is frayed along the edges because it could not cope with the response of the population to the famine crisis in the late 1990s and mostly, as the Ambassador mentioned in passing, the control of information. The regime is losing its ability to control information.  The internet will start to permeate.  Transistor radios with movable dials and second-hand DVD and VCR machines are being smuggled in to North Korea from China.  So the government’s control of information is fading. 

Simultaneously, I think we have made enormous waves in the international human rights community, and Korean human rights activists have made enormous progress in the last three or four years in terms of documenting the violations, something that was started by South Korean human rights NGOs.  But in the late ‘90s, as of 2002, started getting reports by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, which were based also on refugee testimony.  And most importantly, I believe is the resolution starting three years ago in the U.N. Human Rights Commission with extraordinarily lopsided votes in favor of recognizing and condemning the systematic and gross abuse of human rights. 

I believe in North Korea so I believe this has been put on the international agenda and I will continue efforts to keep it there and raise it in prominence.  As we saw last year, there had been two consecutive – there was a U.N. Human Rights resolution at the Commission.  The North Koreans ignored it the following year.  The EU, which is the primary sponsor, created the post of a special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea because North Korea ignored the previous year’s resolution. 

And a very good Thai law professor was appointed as the special rapporteur who has done good reports.  His reports will have, I believe, a lot of impact there in Africa, Asia and Latin America particularly.  And since the North Koreans refused to deal with him, the EU upped the ante, and so last year after having two successive but ignored resolutions at U.N. Commission on Human Rights, the EU raised it at the General Assembly itself.  And it is only a very, very small handful of countries whose human rights practices are perceived to be so bad that they are recognized and condemned not just by the Commission or the Human Rights Committee but by the General Assembly itself. 

This issue is being raised increasingly at higher levels in the international community.  Still nothing is happening but I believe in the next several years, something might happen and the most important element is linking foreign aid to North Korean human rights policy and practice.  I do not believe myself in linking humanitarian aid or essentially Nunn-Lugar type aid where if the North Koreans will let the U.S. and the Europeans, Russians and Chinese disassemble their nuclear production plants and their fissile materials.  I believe that the U.S. Congress should pay for the dismantlement of the North Korean missile facilities without linking Nunn-Lugar type funding to human rights considerations. 

But outside the famine relief and nuclear dismantlement, it is my opinion that sanctions—positive carrots and negative sanctions—the providing of which or the removing of which should be linked to human rights policy and practice.  So that if North Korea wants to join the international political economy of the 21st century, if they want aid from the World Bank, the ADB, the Japanese and the Americans, if they want investment, if they want access to our markets, in that case, if they want to join the international community of the 21st century, then the international community can insist that there are the modern international norms and standards of the international community in the field of human rights that have to be met as well. 

And I think looking at it in five, 10, 15 years which is I think the kind of perspective or scope that you have to look at this for individual countries’ situations, that that is the road that may yield some progress in the future.  But in the more immediate terms, I do not see much that can be done, say, like next year to affect North Korean policy on international religious freedom or any other human rights matters. 

Nicholas Eberstadt:  David, thank you very much.  Sung-yoon the floor is yours.

Sung-yoon Lee:  Thank you for this rare opportunity to share with you a South Korean national’s perspective—dare I say even the South Korean nationalist perspective—on this grave issue.  Forgive me for coming across as a bit self-absorbed but if I may just briefly comment on my job title, I am Kim Jung Research Associate at the Korea Institute of Harvard University.  And as many of you in the room know, Kim Jung is a historical figure, a Korean national hero, the premier of the provisional government during the war years and perhaps the greatest symbol of Korean unity.  And the Kim Jung Museum and Library opened three years ago under the auspices of the South Korean government. 

Kim Jung is a hero even in North Korea today, interestingly, next to the Kim Il Sung family, precisely because he had devoted his whole life to the cause of Korean independence, and after liberation in 1945, to the cause of Korean education, welfare and nation building.  He actualized the greatest national challenge of his era.  And I say, I think throughout history, we can identify the greatest national challenge for any society in that given era and today for Koreans. 

Undoubtedly, the North Korean human rights problem is the greatest national challenge to Koreans, and I am grateful to Americans and other non-Koreans who have taken interest in this great issue and who have done such wonderful work, profound work, as has David Hawk seated next to me.  The United States—you Americans if I may address you—you have no moral necessity or legal duty to address this Korean problem necessarily.  We, Koreans, of course do.  But I think there is something, if I may propose to Americans and perhaps even to the United States government, there is something that you can do. 

And I will just touch upon it briefly, and that is to continue to take the leadership role in addressing, and enhancing the world public opinion on this North Korean human rights problem and also to open your borders perhaps in a limited way to accepting North Korean refugees.  I know Ambassador Lefkowitz commented on this and many of you have an interest on this very question.  I think at first it does not need to be a few hundred or even thousand of North Korean refugees that the U.S. should accept, perhaps even a few dozen this year or next year. 

And of course, I’m presenting the views of a naïve academic but I think in doing so, you, the United States, will send a powerful symbolic statement to the world and certainly put pressure on North Korea’s neighbors to do more, to be more forthcoming in addressing this grave problem. 

In 1943, when Korea was Japan’s colony, in December of 1943, the Great Powers so-called – the U.S., Britain and China – met in Cairo and for the first time addressed the question of Korean independence from Japanese colonial rule.  This was the first great power pledge on behalf of Korean independence.  Many of you would know this as the so-called Cairo declaration.  The aforesaid three great powers –again, the U.S., Britain and China – the aforesaid three great powers, mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea, are determined that in due course, Korea shall become free and independent.  Those are the words of this declaration. 

This proviso intentionally and vigorous of course in due course went through several reversions.  At first, America suggested “at the earliest possible date,” then some objected that is too committal.  Let’s say, “at the appropriate time” and then Winton Churchill came up with this lofty resonant phrase which does not mean all that much, it is so ambiguous, “in due course.”  However, it was a glimmer of hope to repressed Koreans on the Korean peninsula, in China, in America. 

Likewise, I think that United States government—perhaps Ambassador Lefkowitz, his office or even the Secretary of State or even the President himself—should issue a major declaration, a major U.S. commitment, a mission statement even addressing the North Korean human rights problem.  Perhaps, something like this:  “The United States of America, mindful of the enslavement of the people of North Korea is determined that in due course or at the earliest possible date, all Koreans will live under a free and democratic government, thereby enjoying access to the basic human rights to freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of religion or belief.”  I think the phrasing the words “democratic” and “free” are particularly important. 

Democracy, of course, South Korea has achieved in recent decades.  We have grown very possessive of democracy and we can argue about the priorities of civil and political liberties or economic freedoms.  Which right should come first?  In recent months, the South Korean government has issued a series of, to me at least, incoherent statements claiming that the North Korean situation is complex and economic rights should come first.  Therefore we continue to give humanitarian aid to North Korea but we do not want push North Korea too much on political and civil rights. 

Well, in the early stages of national development when you have acute poverty in a country, perhaps the right to food, clothing, housing, education, these are more compelling rights and necessities than the right to vote, to participate in the political process or to even worship and so forth.  To a layman, that seems to make sense.  To the South Korean government, to claim so as justification for its national policy, verges on the border of ludicrosity because economic rights and political rights in North Korea are both in dire straights: they are one and the same.  Victims of economic rights are victims of political rights.  Those who dare to flee North Korea are systematically repressed, and addressing this issue of attempting to free, attempting to bring both economic and political and religious and civil freedom to who are, I think, without doubt one of the most systematically repressed and deprived people in world history, in the history of humankind.  This should be the greatest priority, especially for the South Korean government. 

As a student of history, let me close with a historical analogy.  During the Japanese colonial rule 1910 to 1945 formally, but for all purposes starting in 1905, I think comparing the conditions of life in North Korea today to what the scene on the Korean peninsula was like several decades ago, I think that strong case can be made that the conditions of life even during the colonial era for most Koreans was better.  This is a heresy for a South Korean to propose.  However, when you look at the evidence, especially in the early years of the colonial rule during the 1910s, ‘20s and early part of the 1930s, there was far greater freedom of movement, habitation, worship, and freedom of religion.  You were, yes, still second-class Japanese subjects but you had far greater basic freedoms than what we have seen in North Korea over the past 60 years. 

Sixty years under the Kim Il Sung- King Jong Il dynasty, this is a major, major travesty in Korean history.  We, Koreans are a proud people.  We have over 2,000 years of recorded history during which we attained great levels of cultural and technological and literary achievement, and in the past generation on the world’s stage we can be proud of our economic and democratic achievement or achievements in democracy.  Democracy today to South Korea is ours.  It is not foreign.  It is not western-derived.  Some 45 years ago, that was not the case. 

In terms of the mentality of South Koreans, in April of 1960 we had a student protest leading to the resignation of the President Syngman Rhee.  Those student activists surveyed, over 90 percent of them said, “We do not believe in democracy and we believe that the western style democracy is unsuited to South Korea.”  Some 20 years later, at the time of Park Chung Hee’s death in 1979, there was a survey conducted by the Seoul National University.  The reverse was the truth.  The question was, “What is the priority for the Korean nation, democratic development or economic development?”  Over 90 percent of the respondents said, “Democracy is more important than economic development.” 

What this tells us is that in South Korea today, it is unimaginable for South Koreans to give up our basic economic rights and it is also unimaginable for us to give us our basic political rights.  Just as the South Korean youngster will never give up his or her material amenities like cell phones, nor will we give up our basic political rights.  And this hope and this reality is what I and my fellow South Koreans pray for our brothers and sisters in the North. 

Christianity, a hundred years ago represented to many Koreans, progress, modernization, equality, freedom, and America.  To the North Korean regime today, Christianity is synonymous with imperialism, opiate of the masses, as it is referred to in the study by Mr. Hawk.  Christianity for Koreans a hundred years ago meant progress, education and in terms of Korea’s contact with the outside world, as one scholar has noted, Donald Clark, the rise of the church – Protestant Missionary experience in the late 19th century and early 20th century in Korea – this was the most significant people-to-people contact between Korea and the outside world.  It changed people’s lives, it changed women’s lives. 

And I wish, I pray for a second revolution of sorts, shall I say a significant and meaningful people-to-people contact between North Koreans and the outside world. And I appreciate truly all the good work that religious organizations and NGOs of the world have been doing on behalf of North Korean human rights.  Thank you.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Thank you very much for that contribution.  Tom, the floor is yours.

Tom Malinowski:  Thank you.  Thanks, Mike.  I want to start by recognizing the extraordinary work that David has done on this issue.  It is something that we appreciate at Human Rights Watch because we appreciate that this is still probably the hardest country in the world to do objective, credible, serious human rights research on.  We are no longer at the point where we just have one sentence on our website, as you know, but it still remains very difficult.   

Yes, there are many people coming out and by talking to them you and others had been able to begin to paint a picture of what life is like and has been like in North Korea for many years now.  What is impossible still is for any of us just to go in to the country and do the kind of work that human rights organizations do almost everywhere else: to do on-site research where we interview victims.  We interview alleged perpetrators, and put these things together into the kind of reporting we do. 

I would very much like, for example, to have a better sense of, in real time, of the extent to which the North Korean government’s grip may in fact be loosening or not.  Whether there are regional differences and what that may tell us about politics within the regime right now.  I would very much like to know what is happening in Kaesong, in the industrial development Jay Lefkowitz mentioned because of the policy implications right now for the South Korean government and the United States government. 

We will find out but it is going to take time.  We cannot stand outside the factory gate and interview the workers as we could have done in Poland during the time of Solidarity or even in the Soviet Union in the darkest days of that dictatorship, when at least there were opportunities to travel to the country, visiting groups that you could interview, underground press that you could read. 

The other reason why it is very difficult to do this work, which we have discussed less today, is that the issue remains critically polarized, particularly in South Korea where it matters the most.  The historical reasons for that are important, I think, to understand and deal with.  When South Korea itself was ruled by military dictatorship, the North Korean threat was used by that government as a pretext for suppressing legitimate democratic dissent in the South.  And those who grew up in the democratic movement in South Korea came to be somewhat suspicious of the North Korean human rights issue, sadly.  And those are the people who are now running the government of South Korea, and we have this irony that leaders who have their roots in the human rights movement are suspicious of people who raise the human rights issue on the Korean peninsula. 

 But what it means is that whatever position we take on the issue, we run the risks of being cynically characterized in the South as belonging to either one or another political faction in the politically polarized society there, and that is a mine field that we have to tread very carefully and with great sensitivity, because as Jay rightly stressed, I think South Korea is the key to the future of what happens in the Korean Peninsula. 

What can and should we do about this?  I think in devising a strategy, we need to take, first of all, into account the unique nature of this regime and the reasons for its success, for its endurance over now 60 years.  This is a regime that has isolated its people not just from the outside world, but from all knowledge of the outside ¬world.  Most dictatorships deny their people the right to pursue an alternative way of life.  This is a dictatorship that has tried to deny its people the ability to even imagine an alternative way of life.  And I think probably no totalitarian government in history has succeeded in doing this to the extent that the North Korean government has, partly because they have been at it for now 60 years. 

Stalin only had about 20, the Khmer Rouge had three.  They all try to do this. This is a basic model of what these kinds of governments try to do, but in North Korea, you have got the majority the population that does not even remember living in a different kind of society.  It has been likened to a steel box in which there are now at least a few small holes through which light shines through, and I think the strategy has to be, to begin with, to punch more holes into that box and to let more light shine through.  Until there is at least greater acknowledgement, understanding, awareness of alternatives within North Korea, there is very little that outsiders can do in the ways that we traditionally pressure dictatorships to change. 

And again, South Korea is in the best position to do that because of its interaction with the North, because of the proximity, because of now economic engagement. And that is why I think the important challenge is breaking through this polarization in the South, which we can begin to do with credible human rights reporting of the kind that you have done.  So that the South plays the role that I think it can play, understanding the leverage that it does have over the North, giving the extent of engagement, the extend to which North Korea is now dependent for its economic development on the South.

What about the United States?  I tend to be a hardliner on human rights issues.  I often support sanctions.  I often urge our government to take a tougher line in terms of its dialogue engagement with countries that violate human rights.  In this very special case, I think that the dialogue between the U.S. government and the South and North Korean governments on just about any issue is up to a point pretty good for human rights.  I think the formal state of war that has existed between the two countries and has arguably helped the government there maintain its grip.  It has enabled the North Korean regime to stoke this paranoid fear and hatred of the West, and the United States in particular, and to use that to distract its people from the repression, from the daily hardships, to mobilize them in a military sense for service to the state. 

See George Orwell’s 1984 to see how this works.  That is what happens in North Korea.  And when the United States and North Korea are seen talking to each other, to some extent I hope, I think it de-legitimizes the regime’s position.  The contact with outsiders is treason automatically.  And I think ironically, bilateral dialogue between United States and North Korea, which the North claims to want and the Bush administration, at this point, is resisting, could be more subversive inside North Korea than a multilateral dialogue with the Japanese and the South Koreans and Russians and everybody else at the table.  And I think it would also help in this vital task of depolarizing the politics of this issue in South Korea. 

Now that does not mean I think any kind of dialogue is fine.  I do think the dialogue, and I agree with you absolutely on this David, does need to have human rights content.  As important as the nuclear issue is, talks on that issue should not drag on in a way that precludes raising other vital issues of concern with North Korea, other vital security issues as well as the issue of human rights and reform.  And I agree with those who suggested that the Helsinki Accords here is the right model: that you can have a two-track process with the government like this, whether it is part of the Six-Party Talks or separate from it.  There needs to be sooner rather than later, a dialogue that puts on the table these issues of concerns. 

Should it hold up the nuclear deal?  Again, I agree with you.  No, I think Nunn-Lugar kind of assistance is absolutely appropriate.  I think it is reasonable to offer the North limited benefits in the energy sector in exchange for North Korea giving up the capacity to produce nuclear weapons.  But an agreement that transforms North Korea’s relationship with the world that provides significant economic benefits and security guarantees should require some reasonable human rights progress in the North.  North Koreans should know that if they want full normalization they are going to have to move beyond this narrow dialogue on the nuclear issue and address a wider set of issues. 

And there are obviously moral arguments for doing it that way, but I think there are also solid national security arguments.  We learned a thing or two from the Cold War, about the value of arms control and the limits of arms control.  Arms control can help us diminish the dangers of a nuclear conventional conflict.  But by itself, it cannot eliminate that danger.  It did not eliminate that danger in the Cold War.  We had eliminated the danger that we faced in our confrontation with the Soviet Union; at the end of the day it was triumph for freedom behind the Iron Curtain.  In the mean time, arms control kept us from killing each other. It was a good thing, but it did not solve the problem.  And I think the same will prove true on the Korean peninsula. 

I would not want us to squander all of our leverage on a deal that only solves part of the security problem, and I think this is clearly – the human rights issue – is part of the security problem.  I agree with you.  I do not expect traumatic change soon, but I am somewhat hopeful that some progress is possible.  I have the conviction and faith that every government in the world, to some extent, can be shamed, can be pressed to change its policies in ways that make a difference, even the North Korean government.  The fact that they deny that they have a Gulag suggests to me on one level, that they understand that this is somehow not a good thing for the world to know. 

And I think the more we shine that light, the more we penetrate through that veil, the more we put them on the defensive on these issues, the more we make clear to them that these issues do matter to governments, that they care about in the West and South Korea, the greater incentive they are going to have.  Not to dismantle their regime, but at the very least to minimize some of its more obscene and horrific qualities, in ways that will save some lives in North Korea.  Thank you.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Tom, thank you for those very penetrating remarks.  Ladies and gents, we have about 20 minutes left in our session and I propose we proceed in this fashion: that we collect maybe three questions, and let each of our panelists have a crack at them and then collect a few more questions and do that for the remainder of our 20 minutes.  You have heard of Chatham House Rules.  We do not have Chatham House Rules here for discussion, but we do have AEI Rules.  And the AEI Rules are two. 

Number one, please identify yourself for our transcript.  Number two, please end your question with a question mark.  Let us start – one question there and the other question, a question here, and is there a third one, a question here.  Yes.  Please identify yourself, ask the question and then we will get two more and then we will let our panelists respond.

Yong Jing:  I’m from Radio Free Asia, and my name is Yong Jing.  I’m asking questions to Mr. Tom Malinowski.  You talked about devising strategies to solve North Korean issues.  And recently, I contacted many NGO leaders in European countries and they said they are setting up an international team to bring Kim Jong Il before the International Court of Justice or International Criminal Court.  Are you aware of such movement and do you think it is a plot, a legitimate strategy to do in the future in dealing with that issue?

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Thank you.  Where is our second questioner?  We have right here.  Yes?  Please identify yourself.

Questioner:  I am from the Universal Peace Federation.  For the panel in general: my understanding is that the younger population in South Korea has progressively, or at least for the last few years, become more anti-American than their previous generation for sure.  I wonder, is this a factor in the difficulty for South Korea?  Is it a factor for the South Korean government in addressing this problem if it seems like it is aligning too much with the American views somehow toward North Korea?

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Thank you.  And I think we have a question here from Paul, is that right?  Yes.

Paul Eckert:  Paul Eckert again from Reuters.  Tom Malinowski started at the tail-end to address what I wanted to ask, but I’m just wondering whether the panelists would think that the repression, and the whole cultural fear and all those elements are not too central to the way the DPRK operates? And another is, in calling for an easing of it, if you are really essentially calling for the end of the North Korea, to quote a famous author who is in this room today.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Why do we not go along the panel starting with David then Yoon, then Tom.  David, want to respond to any of these questions?

David Hawk:  Yes, I’ll respond to the first question even though it was not addressed to me.  I believe as some of my friends and colleagues refer to the phenomena of repressing the DPRK as genocide.  I myself do not think that the phenomena of repression in North Korea coincides with the definition of genocide set forth in the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 

But I do believe that some of the phenomena of repression associated with the Kwan-li-so political penal labor colonies—which is where there are some 200,000 folks who have been sent there for lifetimes of penal servitude without benefit of any judicial process or whatsoever, no charges, no trials, no sentencing, no prospect of release. They are not told what they did wrong, even, and it is guilt by association.  It is not only the suspected dissidents or wrong-thought people, but the families of the suspected dissidents and wrong-thought people who are sent to these labor camps for a lifetime at slave labor and mines and timber factories. 

I believe that the phenomena of repression associated with the political penal labor colonies in North Korea constitute crimes against humanity as defined in the Rome Statute Guide.  That is statute is not so popular in this town, but I believe it is the first time that we had actually a good clear definition of what crimes against humanity are.  And I think the North Koreans are perpetrating them. 

Of course, you will have an enormous problem in serving Kim Jong Il with a subpoena.  It is not like the Interpol can get to him, but nonetheless, I believe it is important for people to come to understand that the phenomena of repression in North Korea is not just a human rights violation, but I think it is such a terrible human rights violation that it has been criminalized in the international law.  So I very much agree with efforts to do the legal and factual research that would be necessary to brand the Kwan-li-so political penal labor camp system as a crime against humanity.

Sung-Yoon Lee:  About this younger generation of South Koreans and the pro-North Korea, anti-U.S. sentiment, popular passions come and go.  They ebb and flow.  And this is nothing new when you look at South Korea.  However, what happened in 2002 was that the then-government of Kim Dae-Jung, I would have to say, manipulated the tragic death of two young school girls in June of 2002.  The United States maintains dozens, some 90 so-called Status Of Forces Agreements with various nations of the world and one of the universal provisions is that if an accident occurs, death, or injury to a civilian of the host nation during official exercise, you cannot hand over the jurisdiction of the perpetrators to the civil courts of the host nation.  And that is one of the universal prerogatives that nations of the world enjoy. 

However, to my knowledge this was unprecedented.  The South Korean government, the minister of justice formally requested to the Department of Defense to hand over jurisdiction of those two soldiers, the drivers, to the South Korean courts.  And the popular masses – ignorant of the fine nuances of such agreements – they were offended that the Americans said no.  Americans came across is arrogant and indifferent to Korean suffering.  A penalty had to be paid.  So that was a very –well, depending on one’s view – I guess you could say astute political manipulation. 

I believe that with a new government with a different orientation, virulent anti-U.S. sentiment can be controlled.  If I may just briefly comment on your question, the United States State Department, as you know, issues each year a country report on human rights.  In the report of the DPRK, the very first line reads thus, “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a dictatorship under the absolute rule of Kim Jong Il, the general secretary of the Korean Worker’s Party.”  That is a pretty unequivocal, to-the-point statement.  It is an absolute dictatorship.  We have to recognize the nature of the dictatorship, I think. 

The human rights problem, as well as the nuclear problem – the situation on the Korean peninsula today largely emanates from the nature, the behavior of the dictatorship and trying to approach regime change… trying to induce a change in the behavior of the dictatorship by dangling a few “carrots”, economic incentives, I do not know.  That is a bit like trying to cure pneumonia with vitamins and cough drops.  The intention might be earnest, but the application is misplaced.

Tom Malinowski:  Let me take a couple of those.  I agree with you on the prosecution question.  Absolutely, we should be doing that kind of research and I think we would conclude that it is in fact a crime against humanity.  The difficulty in following through with a referral to a court: it is partly that you cannot serve them, but also partly that with respect to the International Criminal Court, North Korea is not a party, and therefore the ICC does not have jurisdiction over crimes that take place in North Korea. 

The only way the court could have jurisdiction is that if the UN Security Council were to make a referral of the situation to the court, which it has done in the case of Sudan, an important precedent.  But obviously, this is something that would require the assent of the five permanent members including China – very, very difficult.  That should not deter anyone from doing the research and making the case because a case certainly can and should be made. 

On your question, the dilemma that you suggested is one that we face in every authoritarian country in the world.  Every dictator engages in repression because he calculates that it is necessary for him to do so to stay in power.  Whenever we ask a dictator to ease up, we are in effect challenging that.  And yet somehow, time and time again, United States, other countries and human rights movements, have been successful in convincing authoritarian rulers to do what at least on its face may not seem to be in their immediate self-interest.  In the case of North Korea, the government there, I think, has made a pretty cold calculation that regime survival depends in part on greater engagement with the outside world. 

And so the question is, how can we leverage that to induce them to make changes that perhaps do not involve immediately the dismantlement of the regime—because they will not do that—the changes that they feel they can make safely: the mistakes in letting the ILO into Kaesong, letting more human rights investigators in the country, a bit more openness, which I think they probably would calculate they can afford to do, given the stakes for them in maintaining continued international engagement.  And then you take the next step, and then you take the next step, and that is how we do this in other situations, and I think it would work in North Korea as well. 

In terms of South Korea, I think that the question for the United States is how do you talk to South Koreans about these issues, and I do not think we have done a very good job.  I used to be a presidential speech writer for the last administration.  And I kind of appreciate President Bush’s style most of the time.  Clear, declarative, this is right, this is wrong.  I do not think that is a good style when it comes to the challenge of convincing South Koreans to depolarize this issue and to be more supportive of international efforts to press human rights issues in North Korea.  I think a somewhat more sensitive listening style would probably produce more results, one that acknowledges some of the very understandable historical concerns that South Koreans have about this issue—the way the United States engaged on it maybe 20 years ago that begins with that acknowledgment, and then attempts to persuade and convince young people in South Korea that it is in their interest to care more about human rights in the North. 

It is not going to be enough just to state the obvious.  They are evil.  They are all Koreans.  Why do you not care?  That is not going to be enough.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  I think we have got time for at least one more round of questions.  Jay, did I see that you had one?

Jay:  Yes.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  And do I see another hand?  Jay, why do you not just…?

Jay:  Tom, you hit on in your last comment about the polarization in Korea.  I do not know if you can continue with that, but talk more about the polarization here in the U.S.  How can we in the human rights community try to bridge that and try to most specifically get more Democrats on board and get some more of the mainstreamers, center-left human rights organizations, like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch to be more active?

Nicholas Eberstadt:  I got a second question in the back, I see, and do we have a third to round out with a question over here.

William Kim:  William Kim, Voice of America.  I think that there are many symbolic policies, but not a particular policy.  For instance, the special envoy Lefkowitz emphasized the importance of information, especially of radio.  There are radio stations for North Korea, actually RFA, VOA, all from radio stations and free North Koreans, something like that.  But actually, most of all things are shortwave radio, which means they do not reach many audiences in North Korea, actually. 

I went to the Chinese border cities with North Korea last October.  And I tried to buy a shortwave radio receiver. It is very expensive.  Actually, the cost – $60 to $80 – is the six-month salary of a normal North Korean laborer.  So that means though the special envoy and other Bush administration people emphasize that “we do this, we do this”, it seems more symbolic than practical—including the North Korean human rights acts.  So, Mr. Hawk, have you ever thought about that problem and why do they not expand from shortwave to the AM or FM something like more powerful?

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Thank you.  And we have one question down here, Karla, I think.

Mark Jarvis:  Mark Jarvis, Emerging Markets Management.  I just wonder if any of the panelists could give us some update on the most recent developments with respect to the activities of foreign religious-based humanitarian aid group activities in North Korea.  As I understand, North Korea is now no longer formally requesting food aid.  It was mentioned earlier that the World Food Programme, for all the intents and purposes, was kicked out or been shut down and I understand that North Korea is now saying they really want that capital assistance, not aid per se.  So I’m wondering if you can give us some insights whether the foreign religious organizations had seen their activities curtailed.  Thank you.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Thank you.  Why do we not go through our panel again starting with David, then you, and then Tom?  In reverse order.

David Hawk:  Yes.  My understanding is that some of the faith-based European humanitarian aid organizations had been asked to leave Pyongyang and have left essentially because the North Koreans are upset about the EU being the primary sponsor of the Korea resolution at the General Assembly.  I do not know and when I tried find out the extent to which this has it affected non-European faith-based or other humanitarian NGOs, most of them were in fact from Europe, since U.S. NGOs were not allowed to have resident programs there, but only have a program that visits periodically. 

I do not know the extent to which non-European groups have been affected, but within the last six months, the European groups, several have withdrawn.  Yes, that is a wonderful question I have wondered about it myself.  I do not know the answer.  And I, myself, do not know enough about the technical aspects of different kinds of broadcasting to know what is involved or what would be necessary, but I agree with the thrust of your question entirely.  And I think it is one of the most important ways to move, should it be technically possible to do. 

And on the last one or on the first one, it is the sort of phenomena where the ROK “ins” talk to the USA “outs” and the USA “outs”, which is to say, the USA outs would be the Agreed Framework crowd from the Clinton administration, talk to the ROK “ins”.  Well, I would hope that there could be more of a dialogue with the “ins” and the “ins” and the “outs” and the “outs”, and particularly in human rights terms for human rights advocates from here, particularly from organizations that have global credibility with the progressive civil society NGOs in South Korea, particularly the kind that protested in my opinion entirely wrongly the North Korean Human Rights Act. 

There were a dozen South Korean progressive NGOs that wrote a letter, which, of course, had no influence in congressional considerations.  But I think the rationale put forward by the progressive civil society NGOs from South Korea were more ill-informed than erroneous and I would like to see much more dialogue between the human rights watches of the world and the PSPDs.  What is it?  I forgot what that stands for exactly.  People Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, which a very, very influential civil society NGO in South Korea.  And it is the “386 generation”, but those of us who were old enough to participate from afar in supporting the struggle of the students and the workers and the religious activists in the 1980s in the South, they are now in power and we should be talking more to those people. 

I wish there could be more of an organized dialogue between the mainstream human rights advocates in the US and the so-called progressive civil society NGOs in South Korea.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Yoon?

Sung-Yoon Lee:  For the sake of time, may I defer to comment just to make a 10-second comment on the so-called “386 generation.”  The conservatives in South Korea say of the “386 generation”, three stands for the March 1st independence movement of 1919, eight stands for August, the month of August, when the liberation came to Korea in 1945, and six refers to the month of June, the outbreak of the Korean War of 1950 and the so-called “386 generation” is the generation which does not understand history.

Tom Malinowski:  Well, in terms of in terms of polarization within the United States, I mean, it is not quite as acute, obviously, as the situation in South Korea.  I think it is more cultural than political here.  I think a lot of it is that the first groups that were very active on this issue tended to come from the evangelical community and the liberal human rights groups.  We are always comfortable with that.  There is sort of a different rhetoric and discourse. 

One side talks about morality and right and wrong and tends to be very, very – some would say oversimplifying things.  Some would say just calling things by their name.  Whereas the more traditional liberal human rights community, tends to speak more in terms of legal norms and there is, I think, just a cultural divide there that needs to be bridged.  I do not think there is actually that much disagreement on the policy issues, I found, in talking to folks about this issue in the last couple of years.  And that gives me hope that this is something that everyone who cares about North Korea can work together on. 

To the extent there is a potential political problem, I do worry a bit that Democrats in particular will come to associate the struggle for liberty and freedom and human rights with the Bush administration too much because it has become such a focus of this President, and the natural tendency to recoil against whatever the other side is doing will result in democratic candidates for high office who deemphasize issues of liberty and human rights in the next presidential election.  And North Korea is clearly an issue, a country where it has been a signature concern, at least rhetorically with President Bush—we can debate about whether they have done anything—but at least in his rhetoric.

And I do worry a little bit that what you termed the Agreed Framework route, folks who I worked with very closely in the Clinton administration will have a tendency to deemphasize those things precisely because they are too identified with the Bush administration.  And it falls to people like me and Democrats who care about this to make sure that that does not happen, and I will do my very best.

Nicholas Eberstadt:  Ladies and gents, we have exceeded our allotted time even though we could certainly go on here.  I think we have had an excellent session this afternoon.  I would like you all to join me in congratulating David Hawk and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom for this fine report and thanking our panelists for a wonderful discussion.

 [End of Transcript]