February 18, 2002
THE UNITED STATES Commission on International Religious Freedom includes Richard D. Land, Firuz Kazemzadeh, Bishop William Francis Murphy, Felice D. Gaer, Executive Director Steven T. McFarland, Chairman Michael K. Young, Leila Sadat, The Hon. Charles R. Stith, Nina Shea.
Witnesses detail North Korean religious persecution
___By Robert Marus
___ABP Washington Bureau
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--Despite evidence of widespread human rights violations in North Korea, American officials are unsure about how to investigate them properly and disagree about how to respond.
___The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom heard testimony Jan. 24 from witnesses with firsthand experience of the Communist regime.
___Several witnesses described a systematic repression of religion. They included a North Korean defector who told tales of the imprisonment, summary execution and torture of Christians.
___Witnesses disagreed on the proper way for the U.S. government to respond, however. Two called for increased engagement with North Korea, while another called for further isolating the government and ratcheting up sanctions against the regime.
___"By all accounts, there are no personal freedoms of any kind in North Korea and no protection for human rights," commission chairman Michael Young noted to begin the hearing.
___Witness Norbert Vollertsen, a doctor who spent a year and a half in North Korea as a medical volunteer, said he got special access normally denied to foreign visitors because he was given a special humanitarian award by the Korean government.
___"Knowledge about the overall humanitarian situation in North Korea is ... not available for the normal foreign visitor," he told the commission in a written statement. "Protection of the humanitarian interests of the population is not possible."
___Although the government in P'yongyang often points to the fact there are three church buildings--two Protestant, one Catholic--in the capital city, Vollertsen said he never witnessed any Sunday morning activity at any of them. Taking a tour of one church where the person who said he was pastor boasted of 300 to 400 Christians in attendance every Sunday, Vollertsen said, "We found all the seats in the church full of dust--never used in the last months, maybe years."
___He said political dissenters are sent to "reform institutions" that are little more than death camps.
___Vollertsen said he has spoken to refugees from the nation who have headed to South Korea or are amassed along the North Korean border in China. "All the former prisoners of the concentration camps were talking about mass execution, torture, rape, murder and other crimes against humanity," he said. "They were simply punished because of spreading the gospel and reading the Bible."
___Kim Sang-Chul, former mayor of Seoul and now chairman of a group formed to help North Korean refugees, verified Vollertsen's story. He said the three churches in P'yongyang, as well as a nearby Buddhist temple, are merely "ceremonial" and used to fool foreign visitors into thinking the country allows religious freedom.
___Soon Ok-Lee, a former North Korean civil servant, provided the day's most graphic testimony. Sent to a "reform institution" for a crime she says she did not commit, Ok-Lee said she witnessed brutal mistreatment of Christians. Prison guards regularly attempted to get Christian prisoners to recant their faith, she testified.
___She told of abortions forced on female prisoners, some in the latest stages of pregnancy.
___"In North Korea, it is law that no birth should be given in a prison," Ok-Lee explained. "There is an idea of collective punishment, where people with bad ideology are believed to spread on the ideology, so they are forced to have the fetus removed."
___She described one forced abortion on a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy. Still, the baby was born alive. While the mother pleaded for the infant's life as it writhed on the floor, "the jail keeper came in and stepped on the neck of the baby," Ok-Lee said.
___The mother was then publicly executed as punishment for pleading for the baby's life.
___Despite the trauma of the experience, Ok-Lee said she was so impressed with the faithfulness of the Christians in the prison that she later converted to Christianity.
___"What was amazing was that they did not reject God," she told the committee via a translator.
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