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North Korea calls for human rights campaign to be dropped N. Korea seizes on defector’s inaccuracies, but rights advocates focus on bigger picture
(about 15 hours later)
SEOUL — North Korea has seized upon recent admissions by Shin Dong-hyuk, the prison camp escapee who now says parts of his harrowing tale were inaccurate, to pillory the international movement to condemn the totalitarian state’s human rights abuses. SEOUL — North Korea has seized upon recent admissions by Shin Dong-hyuk, the prison-camp escapee who now says parts of his harrowing tale were inaccurate, using them to try to scupper the international campaign to condemn the totalitarian state’s human rights abuses.
Kim Jong Un’s regime is seeking to capitalize on the admission and dismiss all human rights efforts against it. But human rights advocates say that Shin is just one of hundreds of defectors from North Korea who have together painted a collective picture of brutal treatment at the hands of the regime. But human rights advocates say Shin is just one of hundreds of defectors from North Korea who have together painted a collective picture of brutal treatment at the hands of the regime.
Now that Shin had changed his story, “all data on North Korea’s human rights and related reports must be nullified, and plots on human rights… must be stopped,” said Uriminzokkiri, a Web site with close ties to the North Korean regime that often acts as a mouthpiece for it. “Just because there are clouds, it doesn’t mean there is no sun,” said Kim Seung-chul, a defector who started North Korea Reform Radio to try to get information into the tightly sealed state. “Maybe Shin exaggerated some details, but that doesn’t change the reality that terrible human rights violations are being committed in North Korea.”
“Anti-republic human rights liars should feel embarrassed and repent their crimes,” the Web site said Tuesday in article entitled “Lies and plots are bound to be revealed”. North Korea is trying to argue otherwise.
Shin became internationally renowned for his tale of life and escape from Camp 14, a brutal “total control” political prison in the mountains north of Pyongyang. His story was the subject of “Escape from Camp 14”, a best-selling book by former Washington Post journalist Blaine Harden, and Shin was a star witness at the U.N. commission of inquiry into North Korea’s human rights abuses. Calling Shin “human garbage,” Uriminzokkiri, a semi-official Web site with close ties to the North Korean regime, said that “parts” of Shin’s story weren’t wrong but that all of it was “lies and based on fabrication.”
The commission’s report — with its details of torture, infanticide, executions and brainwashing — became the impetus for an international campaign to indict North Korea’s leaders for crimes against humanity. His admission of inaccuracies showed that the human rights push and new sanctions from the United States were a “serious insult to us and a deception of the international community,” said Uriminzokkiri, which acts as a mouthpiece for the regime.
But last Friday, Shin admitted to Harden that he had changed the times and places of some events in his telling of the story, although he insisted the worst parts — such as the torture, for which he bears the scars — remained true. Shin, thought to be the only person to ever escape from one of North Korea’s “total control” prison camps, had become the star of the human rights movement. He gave speeches at the Waldorf Astoria and was featured on “60 Minutes”; he received awards and appeared alongside former President George W. Bush.
North Korea has been alarmed at the mounting campaign against it and particularly at the prospect of Kim Jong Un, the state’s third-generation leader, being personally named in any referral to the International Criminal Court. It had launched its own counter-campaign, publishing its own “human rights report” and releasing videos calling Shin a liar. So his admission last week that he had spent most of his childhood at Camp 18, not at the most brutal Camp 14, and that he had escaped twice before his final breakout undermined large parts of his narrative and sent shockwaves through the community of activists pushing for change.
With Tuesday’s statement on Uriminzokkiri, it has stepped up those efforts. “There will definitely be an impact on the North Korean human rights movement because our movement has been tarnished,” said Jung Gwang-il, who spent three years in North Korea’s Yodeok prison camp and now heads No Chain, a group for North Korean political victims.
Calling Shin “human garbage,” the Web site said that it wasn’t “parts” of his story that were wrong, but that all of it was “lies and based on fabrication.” “We feel discouraged by this, but it’s not going to stop us from speaking out about political prisons in North Korea. This doesn’t change the reality of human rights violations in North Korea,” Jung said.
His admission showed that the human rights push and new sanctions from the U.S. were a “serious insult to us and a deception of the international community.” Michael Kirby, the Australian judge who led a groundbreaking U.N. commission of inquiry into North Korea’s human rights abuses, agreed, calling Shin’s revisions “trivial.”
“The U.S.’s plotting nature can be understood because it has always used sneaky tactics, but for a sacred international organization to go along … makes us laugh more than be appalled,” the article said. “This is a traumatized person, and the fact that he misstated some things is not at all surprising,” Kirby said in a phone interview. “This is one witness out of 300 — his name is in the report only a couple of times — and North Korea should not get away with riding on the back of this disproportionate coverage,” he said, criticizing the media attention to Shin’s revisions.
The article also specifically criticized South Koreans who were using such testimony against fellow Koreans. “It is a shame to believe defectors like Shin, who would do anything for a little bit of money and crumbs of bread, and use them to frame their own people and start all this confrontation,” it said. But Shin’s admission came as the push to hold North Korea’s leaders accountable for crimes against humanity, after years when human rights took a back seat to nuclear issues, was gaining unprecedented momentum.
The resolution, sponsored by the European Union and Japan, to refer North Korea’s leaders to the ICC has been making its way through the U.N. system but still had to win Security Council approval. A resolution to refer Kim Jong Un and his cronies to the International Criminal Court, sparked by the U.N. commission’s report, is on the agenda at the Security Council.
That was always expected to be a hard sell, given that China and Russia — two North Korean allies — are veto-wielding permanent members. Winning approval there has always been expected to be a hard sell, given that China and Russia, two allies of North Korea, are veto-wielding permanent members.
But the changes in Shin’s story should not affect the momentum in the campaign to hold North Korea to account for its human rights abuses, said Michael Kirby, the Australian judge who led the commission of inquiry. Still, the efforts have clearly alarmed the North Korean regime, which has in recent months started to engage on human rights, issuing its own “human rights report” and sending representatives to hearings.
“It’s a trivial issue. This is a traumatized person and the fact that he misstated some things is not at all surprising,” Kirby said in a phone interview from Australia. Now, many of those who have been behind the push have suddenly gone to ground, apparently awaiting the full story from Shin, who arrived back in Seoul from abroad Monday.
“This is one witness out of 300 — his name is in the report only a couple of times — and North Korea should not get away with riding on the back of this disproportionate coverage,” Kirby said. Privately, many activists and analysts in Seoul are saying they had doubts about Shin’s story from the outset, in particular questioning how someone who had no concept of money could have stolen and traded his way through North Korea and into China.
Human rights activists are eagerly waiting to learn whether Shin makes any more revisions and have largely refrained from commenting on the case until the dust settled. But part of the reason Shin became the star of the movement was that his story was so horrifying. Born into a camp and expected to die there, he said he never received affection from his mother, who viewed him as a rival for scarce food.
Harden, the author, is going over the story with Shin again to iron out the facts, and said he would seek to correct the book. He said he betrayed his mother and brother’s plan to escape, was forced to watch their subsequent executions, and was tortured by being suspended over a fire. Shin now says these events did happen, just at different times and places than in his previous tellings.
Analysts say this is partly a result of the intense interest in North Korea and a willingness to believe almost any story that comes out of a state held together by a personality cult. Tales of the banality of life there — the everyday hunger and repression — don’t capture that interest. That means defectors, many of whom suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder after their lives in, and harrowing escapes from, North Korea, embellish their stories to make them more sensational.
A variation of this appears to have happened in Shin’s case, said Ahn Myong-chol, a former North Korean prison guard who is close to Shin, describing how local journalists reported his story once he arrived in South Korea. The Washington Post also carried an article based on an interview with him in 2008.
“The media hasn’t given him a chance to tell his story,” Ahn said, explaining that local journalists set Shin’s narrative in stone before he realized what was going on.
“He is not a celebrity, he is an uneducated defector,” Ahn said. “It was just a matter of time until all this came out.”
Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.