North Korea: Breaking The
Deadlock – a different approach
Cambridge January 2011
www.davidalton.com
Rt.Hon. Professor Lord Alton of Liverpool
SEVEN POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
• Don’t Forget The Past
• How Things Stand Today
• Security
• Human Rights
• Humanitarian Situation
• Helsinki with a Korean Face
• 2010 Visit “Building Bridges Not
Walls.”
1.Don’t Forget
Korea’s Past
Japanese Annexation
From 1910 until 1945 Korea was forcibly
annexed into the Japanese empire.
Model For Communist
Leaders
Kim Il Sung became the leader of the emerging Communist movement.
1950-1953
The Korean War, 1950-53 claimed between 2.5 and 3.5 million lives,
including 1,000 British servicemen
Korea Divided
The 1953 ceasefire led to the country being severed at the 38th parallel
Isolation
Kim Il Sung and Juche
Juche – an ideology based
on self reliance and isolation-
has led to links with the
criminal under world and terrorist
organisations
Juche Tower: Pyongyang
2. How Things
Stand Today
• 2003 – North Korea pulled out of nuclear
non-proliferation treaty
• 2005 - Six Party talks
• 2006 – Test fired seven missiles and
tested a nuclear device
Lessons To Be Learnt
Kim Dae-jung (elected 1997) began the Sunshine
Policy – abandoned a decade later by Lee
Myung-bak
The sinking of “The Cheonan”
-March 26th 2010, 46 dead.
November 2010 Shelling of Yeonpyeong
Island: 2 marines killed
• 3. The Security
Situation
Resolution 1718 demanded that North Korea eliminate
all its nuclear weapons
The Security Situation
One Third of GDP Used On
Armaments While People Starve
30% of GDP is used on armaments and in
developing nuclear weapons; 37% of 6-year-olds
are chronically malnourished.
Six-party non-talks
4.Human Rights
Human Rights must Be Linked To
Security
Human Rights
Yoo Sang-joon: a Korean Raoul Wallenberg
Human Rights
Soon Ok Lee – “Eyes of the Tailless Animals”
Human Rights
Hearing To Take Evidence From Koreans
In The Moses Room Of The House of Lords
Human Rights
British Parliament 2008: Human Rights Activists – Run of Your Life reaches London
Lee Young-Kuk’s Evidence
"From the very first day, the guards with their rifles
beat me. I was trampled on mercilessly until my legs
became swollen, my eardrums were shattered, and
my teeth were all broken. They wouldn't allow us to
sleep from 4 am till 10 pm and once while I was
sleeping, they poured water over my head. Since the
conditions within the prison were poor, my head
became frostbitten from the bitter cold.
As I was trying to recuperate from the previous
mistreatment, they ordered me to stick out my
shackled feet through a hole on my cell door, and then
tortured them in almost every possible way. Not a
single day passed without receiving some form of
torture and
agonizing experience“ – Testimony of Lee Young-Kuk.
Jeon Young-Ok’s Evidence
Jeon Young-Ok: “They tortured the Christians the most.
They were denied food and sleep.
They were forced to stick out their tongues
and iron was pushed into it."
Shin Dong-Hyok’s Evidence
Shin Dong-Hyok --: on April 6th 1996, he was forced to watch as his mother
and brother were publicly executed
Ahn Myeong-Cheol meets David
Cameron
Ahn Myeong-Cheol,
Former North Korean
Prison guard, meets
Rt.Hon.David Cameron MP,
then Leader of the
Official Opposition, at the
House of Commons.
U.N. Special Rapporteur Speaks
Out
Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn estimates that 400,000
have been killed in the past three decades, about
200,000 are detained in the camps, and a likelihood
of a new famine, following 2 million deaths in the
1990s.
Contemporary Slavery: North
Korea – 200,000 in its gulags
300,000 people have fled North
Korea
An estimated
300,000 people
have fled the
country. The 2008
documentary “On
The Border”
is a harrowing
account of their
story
Life and Death on The Border
The Perils Of Escaping Across The River Tumen
Chosun Daily and
Sue Lloyd-Roberts
BBC World News:
“On The Border”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/pro
grammes/newsnight/8701959.
stm
YOU TUBE..
http://www.youtube
.com/watch?
Mike Kim: “Escaping North Korea”
v=QQ4UvFW7UqI
“Duty To Protect” is “Failure To
Protect”
Failure To Protect: Report by Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel and Kjell Magne Bondevik
U.N. Urged To Uphold its doctrine
of “the duty to protect”
2006: the
General
Assembly
of the United
Nations passed
a motion
detailing North
Korea’s
use of torture,
public
executions
and degrading
treatments.
“Nothing To Envy” by Barbara Demick: 2010
Increased use of the death
sentence
• 52 executions since
the failed currency
reforms of December
2009, including the
Minister of Railways
Kim Yong-sam and
Vice Minister So
Nam-sin
St.Andrew Kim – the first Korean priest to be martyred. Around 10,000
Catholics died for their faith in Korea – and continue to do so: “The
Korean Martyrs” by Msgr.Richard Rutt.
North Korea 2010
At Anju – 80 kilometres north of Pyongyang
- believers have met in the rubble of their
church for 50 years
Kim Yong Nam asked for prayers for North Korea
North Korea has only one permitted
Catholic church: and no resident priest
permitted in 60 years.
5. The Humanitarian
Situation
• Two million are estimated to have
died during the 1990s famine and
the World Food Programme
recently warned that North Korea is
short of 1.8 million tonnes of food
needed if people are not to go
hungry. The current food shortages
are the worst in a decade – with 9
million people (one third of the
population) in need of food.
Stunted Growth and Malnutrition
The meagre daily food target: 600 grams of rice per person
Poverty Related Diseases Increase
T.B., Cholera, Scarlet Fever, Typhoid –all on the rise
elderly and orphans at greatest risk.
The Human Consequences
“The under 20s have
never seen anything
other than hunger
and if food doesn’t
go in there will be
another famine soon.”
Professor Hazel Smith
6. Learning the
Lessons of
Helsinki: Helsinki
with a Korean Face
Helsinki With A Korean Face
What Do We Need To Learn And What Might We Do?
Ending The Cold War
North Korea and The Lessons of
The Helsinki Process
Learning From The Past
The Helsinki Final Act was signed by 35 States in 1975
Moscow Helsinki Group of Human
Rights Activists
Now We Need A Helsinki Process With A Korean Face
People Abandoned Their Fear
Leonid Brezhnev Anatoly Dobrynin
“(The Helsinki Accords) gradually became a manifesto of the
dissident and liberal movement…people…could claim official
permission to say what they thought” - Dobrynin
Lessons From The Past
185 million people
have died as
victims of secular
ideology
By the 1950s 2.5 million people were in Stalin’s Soviet Marxist Historian, Eric Hobsbawm
gulags – in 1953 there were 460,000 political prisoners.
Extraordinary Suffering In The
Soviet Gulags
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"Gradually it was disclosed to
me that the line separating
good and evil passes not
through states, not between
classes, not between political
parties either, but right
through every human heart,
and through all human hearts.
This line shifts. Inside us, it
oscillates."
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Russia
Andrei Sakharov
The Siberian Seven
Remained In The US
Embassy In Moscow
From 1978-83.
They Were Inspired By
www.jubileecampaign.org Academician Andrei Sakharov
Russia
Jewish Refuseniks
Vladimir and Marsha Slepak Ina Begun holding a photograph
at their Moscow flat Of her imprisoned husband,
Jewish dissident, Joseph Begun
Russia
Mobilising political and religious
opinion
Alexander Ogorodnikov was first imprisoned in 1979 and in 1980 was
given a six year prison sentence to be followed by five years internal exile.
Importing Russia’s first legal private printing press and with
Alexander Ogorodnikov at a public meeting in Moscow
Ukraine
Suffering In The Ukraine
Maria and Ivan Hel and Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk, in the Ukraine. Hel spent 17 years,
Vasylyk 18 years in prison at Prem – the Soviet “camp of death.” The Greek
Catholic Church was banned and went underground for 43 years..
Romania
Cardinal Jailed for 14 Years
Cardinal Alexandru Todea – given a life sentence in 1951 as “an enemy
of the state” – and spent 14 years in Romanian prisons.
Romania
Pastor Tokes – Takes A Stand
Pastor Laszlo Tokes became the inspiration for the Romanian revolution
Poland
Expressing Solidarity
“Warsaw, Moscow, Budapest, Berlin,
Prague, Sofia and Bucharest have
become stages in a long pilgrimage
toward liberty.
It is admirable that in these events,
entire peoples spoke out — women,
young people, men, overcoming fears,
their irrepressible
thirst for liberty speeded up
developments, made walls tumble down
and opened gates. “
Gorbachev Consigned the Gulags
To History
Germany: The Berlin Wall
Helsinki With A Korean Face
Berlin, 1989, better to build bridges than to build walls
Unfinished Business of 1953
Panmunjom 2009 Berlin Wall 1989
7. 2010 Visit –
“Better to Build
Bridges than to Build
Walls.”
Better To Build
Bridges….
With Baroness Caroline Cox at Panmunjom
“To Begin is to half
complete the task”
- Korean Proverb
“We should
never negotiate
from fear, but we
should never
fear to
negotiate.”
U.S. Defence Secretary, William
Perry, 2003.
• 2010 Visit “Building Bridges Not
Walls.”
http://www.jubileecampaign.org/BuildBridgesNotWalls.pdf
Ignoring North Korea Is Not An
Option
Korea should beware Chinese impatience
Pyongyang University of Science and
Technology – with Dr. James Kim and
Ambassador Peter Hughes
PUST on 248 acres – 600 students;
teaching in English
Kim Il Sung
University
Imperceptible Change: Marketisation Without Liberalisation
So Much Uncertainty
Who And What Comes Next?
North Korea – a different approach
• Don’t Forget The Past
• How Things Stand Today
• Security
• Human Rights
• Humanitarian Situation
• Helsinki with a Korean Face
• 2010 Visit “Building Bridges Not
Walls.”
• www.davidalton.com
